We have been in Indiana for three weeks today. I am taking the kids and heading up north for the second time since we have been home, today. Soon now, we will depart for New Zealand.
We haven't even begun our "big adventure" and AJ's 1 & 2 are expressing feelings of homesickness and I just had a pang for the mountains. As AJ2 is fond of saying, "What are we gonna do?".
Please don't get me wrong, we are very excited! Its been three weeks since we put JJ on a plane with a kiss and a wave goodbye and we are all ready to be back together again. In addition, Auckland looks and sounds amazing and the neighborhood we have chosen to live in sounds fantastic. All that being said, the boys have begun to talk about Virginia as if it were the promised land but instead of making me sad or nervous it makes me so, very happy.
Three years ago when we moved to Virginia with nine month old AJ1, Pavlov and Reagan, I wasn't sure if I was capable of relocating happily, eight long hours in a car, away from Indiana. It was no time before we settled right in and had everything we needed within arms reach. Soon, AJ2 was on the way and then AJ3 right after...there was no time to feel anything but joy and happiness (and the weight of my eyelids at times).
The fact that my oldest two children (and me to some extent) are missing Virginia is a good sign to me. It is evidence that in the last three years JJ and I have been able to create a home amongst the mountains in a small town with an American icon standing watch over us all. This gives me confidence that Auckland will soon be home and when our tenure has expired, we will also file pieces of another city and its people into a part of our soul that will always be there when we think of home, because home is really, simply, wherever we are, together.
As my mother has said to me (especially after moving to New Zealand!), "It's OK to be homesick. It just means that you have a home worth missing!"
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