Seattle 37, On Still Being A Child

Homesickness comes unexpected, after an evening of arranging the terrible furniture, organizing the kitchen, and flattening the cardboard boxes we all dumped by the back door. My parents have visited my sister this weekend - we're so scattered now - and I want them here. I'm so much more a child than some of my fellow kibbutznikim (with good reason - I'm also almost a decade younger than some of them), so quietly wanting my parents to come, appraise, approve. Yes, this is a beautiful life you're building, Dandoolina. Even with terrible furniture.

Anne Lamott wrote that in the aftermath of her father's death, every one of her accomplishments now feels like performing some spectacular, perfect gymnastic routine to an empty auditorium. Suddenly, looking at the pictures they've sent from Chicago - my mother, thick and radiant, some maternal hunger momentarily sated, my father, grayer, looking exhausted, his smile lines deeper and somehow more fittingly handsome than my memory's picture of him - I feel their absence like a missed meal. Hungry, craving them, craving the words I only want from them. Oh, yes, Daneydoo. What a beautiful life you're building.

When I say these things to myself, the words ring more hollow than a single pair of hands in an empty auditorium. I think this, more than anything else, is what makes me still a child.