and life goes on

It´s not as if I expected life at home to be put on pause while I was gone... but I had no idea so many big things would happen in the lives of my friends and family in my absence. People are getting married, engaged and impregnated left and right. Friends are buying homes, running their first marathons, moving to China and Europe, taking new jobs, starting grad school, starting families. My sister left for college, my brother and soon-to-be sister-in-law are planning their wedding. My parents became empty-nesters, my mom is going back to school.

And daily life continues as well. Friends get together for drinks and dinner, run into each other on the street, have birthday parties, laugh. My dad does yardwork and watches birds, my mom paints and runs and fills me in on the inane details of life that I love so much. Seasons change and life goes on, and I get to hear about it from afar.

I look forward to my homecoming; to being a part of all of these simple, beautiful things once again. To seeing engagement rings and wedding bands, baby bumps and newborns, familiar faces with new stories to tell. To sitting around tables at my favorite restaurants, enveloped in the deeply satisfying warmth of friendship.

Thousands of long miles will make you appreciate millions of little things.