Calm Before the Storm

Sorry for all of the quiet . . . Things are still quite busy with the Randoms, and I just got some happy news that my sister got her leave from the Army approved at the last moment and so she will be able to spend Thanksgiving week at home with us. Yay! Yay!

As you could probaby tell, I was not looking forward to the holiday - neither my sister or grandmother were going to be there this year, and the resulting family dynamics would have been awkward, to say the least. Now things will be a bit more festive and I will really look forward to spending some quality time with my sister.

It's funny, you know. The 15 years that we shared a room when we were little, we could not stand each other. It took us both moving out of the house, and starting our own independent lives, for us to truly appreciate each other as real, cool people - and now that we are far apart, I truly miss having her around and hanging out with her.

There are so few people in my life who know me . . . I mean, the whole, real ME - and who I've been and who I am now - that I am starting to cling to them ever more tightly.

In the area where I live, so many people come from all over the country and the world to reinvent themselves and become successful. They may have not fit in their old hometowns, for one reason or another, and their ambitions led them here to try to do what they love - be it work in the halls of Congress or work for a cause that is dear to them. In that process, a lot of the past gets tucked away . . . you go back home, and you feel different, apart, yet still very much tied to where you are from. It is hard for me to explain . . . there are others who probably say it much better . . . You can take the girl out of Philly, but much of Philly remains in the girl.

So my sister and I are two of a kind . . . taken away from a place we loved and thrust into a new place with new expectations, and twenty years later we both are still struggling to figure out where we each belong. It is not a happy state to be in, but oh how comforting to have someone else to share it with. Welcome home, my dear! So glad to see you!