One of my best friends was about to become a mother, and I wouldn’t be there. Oh, we still had e-mails, phone calls, visits, but I would miss the small events—like visiting her in the hospital or leaving a tray of lasagna in her fridge—the mundane participation that is the true meaning of friendship. She was over there and I was here, and the circles of our daily lives overlapped less and less, until they barely touched at all.
I knew it wasn’t her fault, or mine, just the natural consequence of distance. And yet recently the distance had started to loom unforgiving and unmanageable, shadowing almost all my relationships. I felt it when I saw photos of friends’ new boyfriends-turned-husbands, with my baby nieces who were suddenly young girls weaving me pot holders, with my parents who grew a little grayer every time I visited. The people I loved most in the world were living the most important moments of their lives without me, and I was living mine without them. It took me a while to recognize the emotion, unfamiliar as it was, but when I did, it scratched at me with thorny immediacy: I was homesick.
– Ann Mah, Mastering the Art of French Eating
i recently read this bit and several of my friends immediately came to mind. and of course family. i didn’t even have to think. they were this passage. it makes me sad to think that some of my closest friends inhabit or will inhabit certain places and times in my past and are absent from my now.
bd and i won’t be able to just stroll across campus and knock on each other’s studios, i won’t get to see theresa’s ellie and olivia or sarah’s elliot grow up. and most sadly, i can’t (at least for now), hop on a train or in a car to see my mom or dad. the beauty of these friendships and of family though, is that when the circles do overlap, however rarely or briefly, it’s the most effortless feeling. you feel like you’re home, wherever that is.
Yours Truly, Spark 