The Missing

Well, here in the fabulous state of Arizona, summer is peeking her luminous head around spring's corner and it's Travel Time in our household!
I had the great opportunity to spend the weekend with my parents in the eastern mountains of my beloved state last weekend and just yesterday I went to visit my son in the northern central mountains at his Alma Mater.Both of these were road trips, absolutely one of my favorite things, and I got to thinking as I drove back to the valley how much I love to travel.
Durring the summer months I have always taken my kids on great getaway vaccations, in the car and on the road for weeks at a time. This year I'm thinking the Grand Tetons. We have never been there but the drive would be wonderful. We also do a lot of weekend camping all around Arizona. We go to all of our favorite little spots, my kitchen is perpetually in the camping box and I buy marshmallows by the case. We lay out under the stars at night and doze durring the day in the shade of aspen and fir and pine. We swimm in the creek and hike the Mogillon Rim. There is horseback riding and rappelling, the Grand Canyon and Meteor Crater. Good Times.
So, in my thoughts today, I had a revelation of sorts. One of the best things I like about traveling...
Is comming home. The heat, the house, the husband, the lawn and, of course, the pool. What I also love is being told by my friends that I was missed. I thought hard about that today on my drive, about people who don't have connections like that to their surroundings. People who come and go and no one even takes notice. I thought, too, about the people that we want to leave and not come back. Those that show up after a vaccation and bring a forboding doom with them. So much so, that you wish they would be gone all the time.
I feel so blessed by that, the missing, I mean. That with all of my annoying habits and the things that people really hate about me, mixing so well with all my good parts together that when I'm not around something in their life is missing. What a compliment. In my heart and mind, that is presicely the single best compliment anyone can give me... "I missed you." To be so desired and liked for who we are, and the silly insignificant ways we touch others that can mean so much to them, often with very little consequence to ourselves. Cool.
So, today, even though I was only gon for a short time, my dogs missed me like it was a lifetime and several of my friends called to just say, "glad you're back, it's not the same when you're not here." and my husband the sweetest of them all, walking in from work with a big smile and a kiss, "so," he says "did you miss me?"