~ home ~
When I was little we'd go visit family and nearly every time we'd board the plane and get in our seats my mom would shed a couple tears. Me, being the concerned little daughter, would ask my mom why she was crying. She would answer that she missed my grandma and grandpa. "But Mom, we just saw them," I'd reply. I just didn't quite understand that feeling yet.
Now so many years later, once or twice a year when I see my brother, I can't help feeling a lot like my mother as I shed my own tears of goodbye. I feel them welling up before as it really dawns on me that this is the last I will see him for awhile and time is ticking until that goodbye hug in which every time, without fail, I break down and a few hot tears fall. I spend weeks or months looking forward to the time we get to spend together and it always seems the time slips right by me too fast.
Despite our four year age gap, the fact we haven't permanently lived in the same house since I was 10, and that we live over 2,000 miles away from each other, we have always been very close. We stay in touch several times a week and I am honored to call him not only family, but one of my very best friends. He is my home -- my connection to nearly everything in my life through divorced parents, common interests, and the same genes.
So as I shed my few tears and my throat constricts thinking it will be too long until we see each other again, until next time big brother. I love you.