Most people see traveling as one going on a vacation, but I see it as moving through experiences. You do not need to leave your house to travel. You can travel in your house, whether it is through your television or through your cooking. You can even travel through your mind. Just sitting there and thinking about the things you have done and the things you could do is my definition of traveling. Traveling is just movement whether it is you creating the movement or whether someone is creating it for you.

Eight years ago, they moved away. I can remember that day as if I woke up to see it happen again. It was very early in the morning and my parents did not want my sister and I to wake up to see them leave. I forgot that they were leaving the next morning and I probably would not have woken up to say bye, but I think God wanted me to wake up not to say bye, but to say “I’ll see you later.” As I look back on it, I did not know they were leaving when they left. I did wonder why they were up so early, but the idea of them leaving did not even cross my mind. I probably thought they were going on vacation. I remember walking around the hallway snacking on some childhood friends: goldfish. Next thing I knew my uncle and my dad were taking suitcases downstairs. That meant only a few more minutes until they left for what I thought was a few weeks, but ended up being eight years. If you told me at the time I wouldn’t see them here for eight years I would have probably got a heart attack.

Wow, time does fly.

Remembering all the crazy things we used to do when we lived together makes me feel extremely nostalgic. During summer vacations we always stayed at home. The farthest we would travel would be to my cousin’s house in Elmhurst. On the days that we would stay home, our moms would make us hot dogs and french-fries and we would sit on the floor cooling off and watching Barbie movies. On Saturday mornings we would wake up as early as we could and do fire drills and burglary drills. The burglary drills were the funniest and the best part of our Saturdays. Everyone would man their stations; those who were in the living room ready to strike and those were hiding in the room ready to throw buckets of water at the “burglar” who came into the room. The best job was hiding on top of the bunk bed getting ready to jump on the “burglar”. That was about fifteen minutes of our Saturday mornings, the right amount of time until breakfast.

All these memories and more sprinted through my mind as I waited for their arrival eight years later. I was so impatient. Yes, I had seen them the year before and about three years before that, but that was in Arizona and this was their first time back in New York. I paced back and forth over a hundred times impatiently waiting for them to come out of the terminal. Everyone from their flight was coming out except them. Where were they? I thought. Why are they the last people to come out? People began piling up in the waiting room and I began to get annoyed. I felt like I was in the waiting room at an ER. So crowded. So hot. Why are so many people coming from Arizona?

I suddenly saw a lady with a poster welcoming her family from Australia. There was not just one woman; there were about fifteen people with Australian related posters. I asked my dad if we were in the right waiting area and he said yes. He told me that people from Australia take a plane to Arizona then take a plane from Arizona to New York. As my dad was explaining this to me, I saw five people. The five people I have been waiting for, for several days.

And again time did fly.

I saw them dragging their suitcases, looking awfully tired from the flight, since it had been their first time on a plane since they left from here eight years ago. The first person I remember hugging was my little cousin Halima. Hug after hug. Wow, I could not believe that they were all here in New York. All nine of us squished into my dad’s friend’s car. How we all fit I really do not remember. Those are the times when you wished you had a car.

Along came the heat. The arid weather seemed as if came with them from Arizona. Compared to dry arid heat of Arizona, New York heat was like heaven. With the heat, they also brought the feeling of family. We had never had a family reunion before and this was no family reunion, but it was just a great feeling to have them here again. Starting with ten people then, going down to nine then four was a huge transition for me. Having them in New York again brought me back to the good old days, when we all had nothing to worry about. When we were just kids being nothing but kids.

When we got home, Mariam, Amna, Halima, Mona and I all squished into the room that we had nicely fit into eight years back. All of us being in that room again was a great feeling. It was just like the old days when we would spend days and nights together. The only difference was that we were a lot older. Mariam and Mona were going to start their first semester of college. Amna was going to be a sophomore and Halima was going to seventh grade. And I was going to be a junior. One thing that did not change was that we all had a lot of stuff. About an hour later, we could not even see the floor, just like old days.

Their stay flew faster than those eight years I waited for that moment. I did not know that waiting for so long would go by so fast.