Distance and Longing

Some thoughts about travel, love, and nostalgia

Leo says to me, “I want to go to see grandpa” or “I want to go to grandma’s house,” and I say, “I know, baby. We’ll see them soon.” When we’re at my parents house in California, he says, “I want to go home to Mexico,” and I say, “I know, baby. We’ll be home soon.” In one of these recent exchanges, I explained to my 3-year-old that he’ll always miss someone. This is a semi-new experience for me, well, basically since college, so not that new, but I didn’t grow up with the feeling of constant longing because everyone I knew and loved was near me. I had to explain to Leo that we have families and friends that don’t live close together so there will never be a time he doesn’t miss someone or that someone doesn’t miss him. I wonder if the fact that he will grow up like that will make it more or less bearable when he’s my age. Will it just become normal? Or will he hate it so much that he’ll make sure to start a family in the same place as his entire community? 

I got the travel bug in high school when my mom agreed to let me go (aka demanded that I go so she could live vicariously through me) to Spain, Portugal, and Morocco with my 9th grade Spanish class. Since then, I’ve been traveling the globe at any opportunity I had. I went across the country to college, studied abroad in Buenos Aires, spent 2 years in Mexico in the Peace Corps, and have looked for chances in between to travel to Europe, Asia, and Central and South America. Because of being extremely blessed with the freedom to explore the world, I’ve made friends all over the place that I inevitably miss. 

Some moments in travel give you a glimpse into heaven or enlightenment or a higher power or whatever you want to call it. They transcend. You feel connected to people you just met. You taste food you never knew existed. You find yourself in clandestine clubs and speakeasies experiencing new music and are overcome by the energy. You belly laugh with new friends over a bottle of wine (or whatever is the drink of choice where you’re traveling). But if you can sit back and see that moment from outside of yourself, you know it won’t last. You take a breath, are immensely grateful for this moment, and you already miss it. You long for it. 

I used to just fall in love with people I met on a train or shared a drink with at a hostel. Not in a romantic way, but just a deep love for these people. I thought, wow we have so much in common, and we’ll be friends forever. Of course, the only thing we really had in common was that time and space, but I held that time shared in such high regard that it seemed like the only thing that was real. The only thing that mattered. 

Now as I get a little older and wiser (I turned 36 this month), I have that same deep longing for my lifelong friends. I miss those moments as a twentysomething feeling like the world was big and powerful and human connection was the spark that inspired me to believe in infinite possibilities for my future. But I know now that those moments are gone with those people and those trains and hostels. 

Instead, what creates a physical pain in my heart are the people in my life that are not temporary but sometimes feel so far away. Now instead of wanting to travel to new places and meet new people (don’t get me wrong, I definitely have a travel bucket list), I just want to hop on a plane to Minneapolis and drive 3 hours in the snow to visit my childhood friend and her 4 kids. And then I want to fly to New York, where I’ve been a million times and doesn’t excite me in the least, to sit on smelly subway trains to visit my friends from college and the Peace Corps and I just for a minute want to go back to our small houses in the pueblos in Mexico and laugh and talk for hours about nothing and everything and I want to zoom back to college and stay up all night watching Star Wars and talk about families and how smart we thought we were. Then I’d fly to Argentina to have a submarino and fresh made mermelada on pan tostado with my host mom. I want to be in California with my brother’s family and have our kids grow up together. The time speeds by at my semi annual lunch dates with my girlfriends. At parties in Mexico, I sip my tequila while shouting over banda dreaming of a deeper bond with the present company. 

Travel is a cool thing. I believe the things I believe and live the way I live because I’ve seen the world. I have learned to listen. To come into conversations with no expectations and to come out learning something new. It’s changed the way I understand my faith. It’s changed the way I relate to and love people. It’s a thing I wish more people could and would do. The world would be a better place if we all understood each other more, and the best way to do that is to experience each other’s lives. It’s a cool thing. 

But it’s also hard. It’s like education; something we should all be blessed to have, but the more we know, the more we know. And that’s not always easy. 

I want to be in all the places with all the people at the same time. FaceTime helps but it’s not the same. Social media makes us feel together because at least we know what our friends are eating for lunch, but I’m not getting the same transcendent feeling when I look at pictures of my friends' kids and puppies from my cell phone. I just long even more. Even the people that are proximate to me, the person I share a bed with, I long for more. For the child I birthed, who could not possibly be physically closer to me, I long for more. Are we just so busy with life that there are no more moments that take us to a higher place? Are our phone calls with friends so blocked in between snack times and nap times, that we never really connect? I know what’s going on in most of my friends’ lives, at least big career changes, pregnancies, big trips planned, but it’s not enough. 

Longing is my natural state. It’s not that I’m stuck in the past or always reminiscing. It’s that I want to share life, like really share life with everyone I know. I don’t want just the memories. I want that feeling in my present. But I’ve come to conclude, just as I told Leo, I will always miss someone. No matter where I am or what I’m doing there is a hole in my heart. I try not to be sad about that, because that deep feeling of nostalgia, is in a sense, my connection to my people so I hold that dear. But I want to believe that there will be a time and space where life will be less about pickups and dropoffs and zoom calls and trips only because of work, and will be about the moments shared, the connection, the light in people, the hope for a future we haven’t yet imagined. I have to believe that. The pain in my chest makes me believe that, because it still is the only thing that’s real.