Scattered

My family moved so often none of the kids is from where they were born. Even when we moved back to a place, enough time would have passed to make us strangers, even to the people we had known.

The adults had a bit of an easier time. Adulthood brings changes, but nothing like the changes of growing up.

We learned to pack up, let go and move on.

Over time, we accumulate friends that last a little longer, hanging on as correspondents. We're happy to see each other when we manage to visit. But what's the point of having friends all over the world if you can't get all over the world? It certainly seems to accentuate the fragility of life and the preciousness of our connections.

Ah yes. Our connections. Those things that now make it impossible to settle in any single place without pining for at least some aspect of another place, other people.

You might make it work if you lived almost forever and had unlimited resources. But then life wouldn't be a struggle. The shared struggle against what each of us considers the forces that need to be struggled against unites us in seriousness or in humor. You find the people who react the way you do or who react entertainingly, and you try to stick with them. You help the ones you think you should help and oppose the ones you think deserve it. Maybe you do it by making up your own mind. Maybe you do it by following orders from someone you let think for you. But the struggle is what unites us.

It's almost time to hit the road again, to leave a place where one set of struggles seems to have been pretty thoroughly lost, to return to a place where that battle may yet be won. But friends remain here to be missed. None of us can travel at will to bridge the distance at any instant the urge strikes. We have to hope we get to the next encounter, and many more.