Ok. Better Now.

Ok.

I had a good cry after my "I Can't Go Home" post. Our reactions to life are a funny thing when I think about it.

It's weird. I was excited to go home earlier this year. Since I wasn't going to be home for Thanksgiving, I took the week of Halloween off so that I could take my niece and nephew trick-or-treating. I also spent a lot of time with my grandparents. The rest of the relatives I avoided. I just didn't want to deal with their judgmental eyes on me.

Then Christmas and New Year's comes around and I get like this. This pattern has been going on for too many years now. I don't know how to break the pattern. Any suggestions? Anyone? Anyone??

The only thing that keeps me going home is to spend time with my niece (2.5 years) and nephew (5 years), and my grandparents. It's amazing how much love I have for my nephew and niece. I'll have to blog about that another time. The familial and maternal love I have for them - it's overwhelming and awesome. I look forward to having my own children some day. :-)

It's also amazing the love I feel from my grandparents, despite the communication gap we have. My conversational chinese is limited, but one of the lessons I've learned from them is how awesome the power of true, unconditional love can be. I feel it whenever I'm around them and I know that they understand me no matter what my circumstances are. I even feel that love now, just as I think about them. It was a sad day when I went home one particular time a few years back and saw how much they have aged. How I realized their mortality, and how I sobbed knowing that all things in life come to an end, and yet, those ending truly are new beginnings. The beginnings of a new type of relationship, a transition from the physical to the eternal when it is their time to move on. Again, it comes back to the imprint we leave on people's hearts.

I have yet to accept how mortal they really are. How do we accept that our time and resources are limited? I want to spend time with my grandparents. I want to spend time with my niece and nephew. But I have my own life ahead of me to build, too. And it's rooted here in SF for the time being. How do we translate our desires to love into that imprint on someone else's heart?

Oh man...sobbing like crazy now. I hope this mood passes soon.

Thanks for listening. Now go hug someone just for the heck of it. :-)

*Hugs*