how do you fit 2 years into 4 weeks?

hmmmm.

we have our tickets home.  this is fantastic.  but, now begin the logistics.  how do you squeeze two years of being gone into 4 weeks back to visit? how do you catch up with all the people you want to see and be with, and really have significant time with them, and deal with "re-entry", and have a 'vacation' and deal with 're-exiting' (ie: catching up on doctors appointments, mammograms, orthodontists and restocking on meds, gatorade, plastic bags, and chocolate chips?) 

i think these things are incompatible.

people have said, 'forget the vacation part'.  people have said, 'you won't be able to see everyone'.

but i don't want to forget that and i do want to see everyone!

i'm sure a large part of this comes down to organization-which- i'm not great with- so i'm starting to have that panicked feeling.  this is the problem with living across the world from where your life was for 40 years.

because if i make a list of all the things i want to do when i go home, and all the things i need to do when i am home, i don't have enough time. and this makes me think about time in general. this makes me think about my days now. this also makes me think about want and need, and the value of lists altogether.

i'm torn between stressing and planning and scheduling and packing full the 4 weeks that i have between the 4 years that i have been and will be away again before returning; or just going home and letting it evolve.  because there is a part of me that wants to just show up at home with no warning, no plans, no advanced notice and just go the park with my kids and see what happens.  but then i know that half the people i'm dying to see will be on vacation with their families far away and not at the park, and that would be sad and lonely.

i know the answer lives in the tension between these opposites.  the answer is again, in the gray not the black or the white.  i can pick one day for appointments.  i can pick 4 days for relaxing on the dock of the lake with a book and playing in the water with my kids.  i can schedule a few lunches, a few dinners, and i can have a bunch of days to see what happens. i can also prepare for the fact that 99% of this trip will not be a vacation, but maybe 1% can be.  i can know that i won't be able to see everyone, and those that i do see i won't see for as long as i'd like. 

i think the hardest part will be saying goodbye again.  when we left the first time, it was hard and terrifying and exhilarating all at once.  now this has become our home.  now we have a new normal. and now we need to grow into this new normal where visiting every 2 years, catching up and saying, 'goodbye until...' becomes the new normal.

over here in the expat and missionary worlds, this is very normal.  it's just my first time....  i'm sure it will be wrought with mistakes and mishaps and disappointment, and a lot of laughter and fun and remembering and new memory making.  i'm sure it will many things that i'm not expecting and many things that i am, and i'll be surprised by which things surprise me.

i hope i can be gentle with my expectations, and that others can be gentle with their expectations of me.  i hope that i will hold loosely to the 'need to' list and fully embrace the 'want to' list.

but whatever happens, i can't wait to come home!



“I give you this to take with you:
Nothing remains as it was. If you know this, you can
begin again, with pure joy in the uprooting.”
― Judith Minty, Letters to My Daughters