6 days. That is the emotional and physical low point in my jetlag process. I get weepy and cuddly and miss home like crazy. Because that is usually why I am jetlagged in the first place, because I crossed the Atlantic to go to my other home. That small island, where part of my heart will always be.
It was awesome. Full stop.
To be able to take a full month off with the hubby and go to our other home, where we are lucky enough to have a amazing place to stay, with lots of furry roommates, was pure luxury.
And of course, this came on top of me graduating. Facts of life that are not real, until celebrated with the peeps at home.
All in all, good things.
Funny, however, how easy it is to become blind to all the riches around us. We had just gotten back from our vacation and I got this letter from the IRS, with my tax return. It was money I had not been counting on at all, money I was using to bring my parents to Holland. My mother has not met her two youngest grandsons and I had vowed to make it possible this year, not matter what.
I am extremely grateful that my husband and I are of the same frame of mind. A successful life is not having an expensive car, a big house and a boat, but we both measure success in the way we can change other peoples life. This was a very easy decision, to enable my parents to hug grandchildren, that I am able to cuddle on a weekly basis.
On day 6 of our return, I was online looking at prices on the KLM site. The tickets were a lot more expensive than I had hoped, so I was widening the search and got to cheaper tickets later in the year. But that meant that my kid sister would already start school and that would be stressful, with the kids and the parents around. So I called her and we hawed and hemmed about it and after I hung up, I went to take a shower, slightly frustrated that we could not find a good solution.
I often take music with me in the shower. Splash proof phone helps. As I was in the shower, the theme song of our vacation (and title of this blog) came on. I was singing along and suddenly, quite unexpectedly, I was bawling in the shower. After restarting the song, I listened to the lyrics more consciously and realized that it was the sentence that hit me, hard, was: tin hende ku ta sufri, mi ruman, tin mama ku no por drumi, mi ruman... (there are people suffering, bro, there are mothers who can not sleep, bro).
Here I am, making a huge fuss about not being able to find the perfect planning, for buying tickets for my parents, with money that was being handed to me, as I had just returned from a months (!) holiday on a tropical island, because my kid sister has passed through this grueling application process to start a new career, that was going to change her life and the life of her kids. Kids my mom has yet to meet.
Woman, get a grip.
So after I had had a good cry, and a good, stern conversation with myself, I regrouped and basked in the glow of gratefulness. We have such a good life (dushi bida).
So I made this slideshow of our life the last few weeks, to remind ourselves how dushi our lives are. We really do have the most beautiful things around us, we have to open ourselves up for them, because we have today, who knows tomorrow. Which is the cliffs notes version of the lyrics of the song title of this post.
