A Touch Of Homesickness ...

Right now, for those who don't know, it's Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. Next weekend will be Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Last week it was my parents' anniversary. This weekend is September 11th (I'm from NY originally).

Needless to say, these few events falling so close together this year is just triggering a load of homesick emotion that brings me to sappy tears.

I have my daughter and my husband, and wouldn't trade anything in the world for them, but there are times that I wish I lived 15 minutes away from my family again. Sometimes I wish we could grab dinner on Friday nights at the diner (Good G-d, how I MISS diners!), that I could actually WALK to temple with my dad for the high holy-days, and that I could pick up the phone, call my sister-in-law and go hit up a Barnes and Noble or Starbucks together for a nice iced chai.

I'm just feeling sappy and sad, and a little bit lost without my family around to make me smile. I spoke to my mom today for about an hour and a half, and it's probably the longest and most coherent conversation we have had in ages. Without a screaming, crying or nagging child (the kid for me, my dad for her! -- I kid, I kid!) in the background, or the inability for my mom to hear me, or speak to me, or anything along those lines.

My mom is one of my best friends. She has been forever. True, maybe not when I was just a child. An ignorant teen who was angry that she waited up for me, even if she did fall asleep with her glasses on and a book on her knees as my dad snored easily beside her. There is no woman on this earth that I look up to more than my mother, even though she is an inch shorter than I am. And there is no woman I respect more, who knows my heart as well as she knows her own, and I hers like I know mine, and ... well ... I just miss her.

I miss my Pops, too, of course, and he means the world to me and will always, ALWAYS be my hero. The man who destroyed any bug that dared hang out on my ceiling, who threw me in the pool so I'd learn how to swim, and picked me up on his shoulders from underwater. The man who I never saw shed a tear until we suffered unbearable losses. My father, my rock.

I love my parents, and while there are certainly times I am okay with living 500 miles away, there are times, like these - - these weeks right now, where I'd give anything and everything to have my family close by enough to just BE there. In an instant.

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