Family Coming and Family Going

  My brother J, his wife L and their two boys R and I arrived on Kwaj the other day.  We've been planning this visit for almost six months and I was almost beside myself the day they arrived.  We love living on Kwaj but the biggest downside for us is the distance from our family.  We talk on the phone almost every week but it's just not the same. 
  The family arrived tired but in one piece and we spent the rest of the day getting them settled in to their house and showing them around Kwaj.  The day ended my favorite way- with us chilling out on the back porch while the kids played around us. 
  The next evening, we headed over to Ebeye so that J and L could meet Bubu and Jimma.  That trip is another post (or two) but everyone had a good time and I was so happy that to usually separate branches of my family got to spend some time together.  Bubu and Jimma left for Majuro the next day (that's why we rushed our family over to meet them) and they'll be gone for the rest of the month. 
  I  have been taking the kids over to Ebeye every Monday afternoon for a little over a year now, and this Monday, I found myself a little out of sorts.  We were packing up to head to the beach with Josh and Liz and the boys, and I was grumpy about everything.  When I looked at my watch and realized that it was 3:30 and I wasn't on the boat to Ebeye, I realized why things seemed so off- I wasn't where I was supposed to be.  I was missing Bubu and Jimma and my family time with them.  I hadn't realized how much I looked forward to my visits with them until I didn't have one.
  So even though I'm looking foward to our Marshallese family coming back to Ebeye, we're having a great time just spending time with our US family.  The four kids play together like they've never been apart and almost never fight. L and I kvetch about kids and men, and J and D kvetch about women and work while the kids ride circles around us in the street.  And for a few moments, everything is perfect.

Comments

Popular Posts