As I try to situate myself comfortably in the back of this car for a road trip home after a beautiful Christmas, I can’t help but feel a hole in my heart.
I’ve grown up living away from my extended family, not just a few hours away within the same state or across a state line but several hours and several states away. My family is full of Midwesterners –mostly Chicagoans who know how to have a good time and make the most out of family gatherings scattered throughout the year. Sure photos and social media posts are wonderful and help me feel like I’m still a part of the family, but sometimes I need more. When you can’t remember the last time you were around to watch a cousin grow up, attend a family wedding, or hold a new born, it kind of starts to pang at your heart.
For fifteen years of my life I’ve lived far from my family and I’ve had to witness first steps and hear first words through video. I’ve had to click through wedding photos and open a text with a baby announcement and I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve sung or heard “happy birthday” over the phone. Many months pass before I’m able to spend face to face quality time with my grandparents or my aunts, uncles and cousins, these months bring so much growth and new personalities that I have to get use to every time I come home. At least one cousin is taller than me every time I visit, one aunt and uncle has had a new baby, one family got a new dog, my grandparents have new furniture, all of these things approach me at once and I only have so much time to soak it in while in the presence of family.
This way of life has never been easy, but it has never not been worth it. You see, distance makes the heart grow fonder in so many ways. The days I spend missing my family the most are the reason I cherish the moments I do get to spend with them. If I could spend every day with my huge extended family, I wouldn’t be able to “catch up” the way we do after being apart. I wouldn’t be so eager to spend my holidays with them if seeing them was a regular occurrence. I wouldn’t have time to miss them or time to create new separate memories to share during family gatherings. But of course, I also don’t know my cousins as well as I would like. I don’t have enough time with my grandparents, and it is so hard to say the words “I’ll see you… Uh, I’ll see you when I see you I guess!” while ignoring the little crack developing in my heart.
My big, crazy family is one of a kind and I am grateful for the relationships I have with them. All in all, not having grandma down the street isn’t the worst thing in the world, not being 10 minutes away from my closest cousin isn’t the end of the world but it is its own beauty in disguise. My family has some of the strongest ties because of the distance we’ve had between us since before I began grade school and I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
