Five Minute Friday: Together

Sometimes I look about our new life here and wonder what we've walked into, all of us together. Most everyone gets excited about this Living Overseas Thing --"Oh, it'll be such a good experience for the kids! How many people get the opportunity to travel?!"-- and they're right, but: it's a lot less glamorous when you leap over the sparkly divide into gritty reality.

They don't understand why we can't just load into the car and drive to Grandma and Papaw's. Darling, we can't drive across oceans.

They want the food they remember from the United States. Oh, yes, I'd love some Chipotle too, my love.

I think to myself that they didn't quite walk into this on their own. They came with their small hands in our larger ones; they came on our hips, on our shoulders.

And even though they fall silent sometimes --just as we do, their parents towering over them-- I don't fret too much over the absence of familiarity when I watch them roam new parks, behold mountains I'd never heard of until I was in my mid-twenties, shake hands with people they don't understand just yet but they'll smile at them anyway.

So I smile too. Yes, we're in this together.