Thoughts along the way...

We’re traveling to Prague with Tim’s parents for Easter weekend. We’ve been on the road for eight hours now on a trip that was only suppose to take four. I hate traveling. We had a stahl, as they call it in Germany, for about two hours; two hours of stop and go and feeling my stomach jump from my belly to my throat every two seconds. I’m a terrible car traveler. I get tired, and sick, and nauseated, and grumpy; I hate traveling in vehicles. Yet we are finally moving again, and only have about an hour and half before we finally make it to our little bungalow.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very excited about this weekend. Tim and I love Prague, it’s the first place we actually traveled to together, our first time to hold hands, to dance close together in a club that took us forever to find, our first time to walk through an ancient city and have it come to life right before our eyes. We can’t wait to go back and reminisce through the place where it all started. But I could have definitely done without the long trip to get here.

It’s road trips like these that make me miss home. Traveling in a land far away, with people that I love but that I also don’t know as well as my own family (of course not including Tim), inching my way through traffic, foreign signs, bathrooms you have to pay to use, and I begin to long for home more than any other place on earth. I love adventures, I love to travel, I love meeting new people and seeing new countries, but they are places I only want to see for a little while and then I want to go home.

Home for me is not really any particular place. My family is scattered in different locations, and their homes never really feel like mine. Rather, home for me are the people, my people, my family. Of course, my family is like most families, we can drive each other crazy in a second, but there is something comforting about being with them, even when they drive me crazy. They know all about me, my faults, my inadequacies, my failures, my annoyances, my religious and political beliefs, my lack of religious and political beliefs, my stubbornness, my temper, and they still accept me fully and love me fully (well most of the time!). Not to say I don’t drive them crazy, but I’m sure you understand what I mean! We are a family, and when we are far away from each other, I think we each long for home in our own special way, to be with each other once again.

Tonight, as I sit and stare at the full moon following our car as we hurry along; I can’t help and think of my older sister, and long for home. Jenny and I are only ten months a part, Irish twins, which really means for one month out of the year we are the same age. Maybe not a big deal to most people, but for a little sister who got to be the same age as her cool, older sister once a month every year, wow, that was something special. Jenny has been my best friend for as long as I can remember. When we were little kids, we’d do everything together. Climb trees, build forts, perform cheers and sing songs to anyone who would pay to listen (having them pay was Jenny’s idea), have tea parties in the woods and invite all the little creatures, create tent towns, roll down hills, and sit on the couch and watch Sesame Street together. Having a sister who was only ten months older than me, always meant I had a friend.

Jenny was one of those people who could make an entire room fall in love with her in a matter of minutes. All she had to do was walk in a room and people would flock to her side. I was always amazed at this quality she possessed. It was as if she had magic fairy dust she would sprinkle on all the little people she met, which made them immediately fall head over hills. I would always sit back in admiration and wonder as my sister, with her big heart and contagious smile, would brighten up a room in seconds. In high school she was nominated for every award possible, most beautiful, most charming, most personality, most caring... She had hundreds of friends and she befriended everyone, the cool, the un-cool, the nerds, the jocks, even all the mentality-handicapped kids knew and loved her; literally out of our 4,000 member school everyone knew her. And I was fortunate enough to be her side kick.

Most people didn’t know me, but honestly that didn’t bother me one bit. I was more of the quiet type; whereas she had hundreds of friends, I was very content with my three or four best friends. Jenny and I didn’t always see eye to eye, in fact in high school there were times I literally thought we might kill each other. I would say things to push her buttons and then wait for her ‘crazy’ side to appear, which normally didn’t take long to come out =). But no matter how much we hated each other we always had each other’s backs, and that has never changed.

She always knew the right things to say to cheer me up, even when no one else could. When I would leave some place defeated, she would remind me of my worth. When I would feel friendless and alone, she would remind me of my courage. When I felt far away and lost, she would remind me of the home that was always waiting for me, the family that always loved me. It’s amazing to realize that 27 years later she is still reminding me of these facts, whispering them in the back of my head, reminding me no matter how far I go, home is always there waiting for my return.

Some people can go their whole life and find lots of best friends along the way, but those friends can come and go. I am fortunate enough to go my whole life and have the same best friend, a friend that comforts me even when I’m thousands of miles away from home, even when she doesn’t even realize it.