My baby girl – who’s almost 30 but always my baby girl – moved to the UK 5 years ago. 5 years have passed in a blink of an eye. For one reason or another, I haven’t seen her since the summer of 2019. 5 years may have passed in a blink, but these 3 years feel like 100. Our perception of time defies logic.

In 9 days time, I’ll get to squish her close when I get to London. I get 4 glorious days to drink in all of her wonderful, before having to say goodbye. I’m determinedly not thinking about that part yet.

I miss her terribly. We exchange messages almost daily – even it its a cute cat video. So even though we are in touch all the time, it’s still so hard having her live so far away. I often say when I intentionally raised a strong, independent woman, I didn’t mean quite that strong and independent. But what is our role as parents other that to give them the tools, the courage to envision their best lives and then pursue it. Relentlessly.

It makes me wonder what it would have been like for my grandmother when my uncle went out for the evening and then left the country that same night after a foiled act of protest against the apartheid government. How long was it before she got word that he was safe? A number of my father’s siblings left South Africa over time and I wonder what that was like for her as a mother.

The only communication then would have been letters sent via snail mail – remember that flimsy onion skin air mail paper – and the rare, brief phone call that would have cost a fortune. I remember each letter that arrived from Canada did the rounds as everyone got to read it and get all the news. I wonder if the longing is different when you have 11 children and still have some close to home.

A generation before, her parents would have boarded a ship in India for South Africa. What did they know about South Africa to head there searching for a different life? What made them believe it promised more than their current lives? My grandmother was born in 1912 – so her parents would have ventured to South Africa somewhere in the late 1800’s/early 1900s. Were their families worried about them? Or was the promise of a better life or perhaps a grand adventure, worth the separation? What were their lives like that they took such bold steps searching for something different?

Generation after generation, it seems we leave home in pursuit of something else. My child went for love. I left for an adventure. I don’t know what my grandparents left for.

Maybe, at our core, we are wanderers, always searching for what else is out there. The wanderlust of our loved ones is matched only by our longing for them, mixed in with pride in their courage, their bravery to tread a new path.