You can't go home... well actually you can

It's Christmas night, and I am sitting in my parents' study typing this blog entry. I'm here because after 2 hours of familial bonding, which includes the drive from the airport, I have been exiled from the family room by my parents' need to watch their Korean "dramas."

Somewhere in the depths of my mind, I imagined my return to California would be heralded by trumpets. Streamers and and confetti would litter the air. Neighbors would line the streets and say. "Why there goes ET#1, the youngest of J and S. She's come alls the ways from the East Coast."

I guess I would think that because since my last visit (this summer), my family complained of my lack of face time home. On the phone they would say, "We miss you." Or "Your niece is so big now, you would hardly recognize her." Or my favorite, "ET#1, phone home." "May be it was "come home," but you get the jist.

I have been doing this journey home for 17 + years now. Why I have never lived where the rest of my family is, is a mystery but that is the way the cookie crumbled. Maybe my arrival is just old news and that is why I am in the study right now.

Maybe it is not a big deal because that you can always go home. Admittedly, this is not my home, this is the house my parents moved into three years ago, but where ever they are feels like home. As soon as I got into San Jose Airport and realized that they were late (yet again), I felt that annoyance that flashes up when you are a teenager and everything your parents do irritates you. The fact that I am 30 and perfectly capable of helping myself, but instead had my 68 year old mother serve me dinner. And that tonight I took a bath, something I never do in my apartment, and read a chapter from a marked up copy of the "The Pawn of Prophecy" I bought at the library book fair in the 7th grade.

So from the study at my home, "Feliz Navidad, Joyes Noel, Frohe Weinachten...."