echo

After spending a day having a good time and not a care in the world with people that I love, I got home a checked my e-mail. This was what was waiting for me:

"Your father and I are in Barcelona, just arriving back to the hotel (at nearly midnight!!) from eating at a lovely restaurant. It is so great to be here, looking at people all around us talking with intensity and expression and passion, like I and you do, not with anesthetized demeanors! It feels so like being at home! Of course it also feels like we forgot something, because you both are not along with us for the trip. Everything we see, we feel your absence because we can't share it with you both. It feels so weird not to have you with us on this adventure, as we always did all of our lives... I will wish with all my heart that you know your roots always, because that is the biggest gift: to echo with the places and the dignity of our ancestry, as I do here."

[Yes, my mom really does write like that - and English is her second language - but that's how she sounds especially when she's really, truly happy. You can hear the passion in the way her words are strung together. Nobody can say that I'm not my mom's daughter... :) ]

This is how I felt in Mexico... this is how I feel with AIESECers... this is how it feels to be at home. But for us, home can be anywhere in the world.

Tonight, I'm toasting to the possibility of the future. I'm beginning to embrace the uncertainty, because knowing exactly what the future holds for me isn't as pleasurable and exciting as it is to know that whatever I do, I'm driven to do because of the chance that I will have this feeling... but in a different country with a different culture and people I've only just met.