Yesterday I got to skype with my family for a long time. I skype with my parents a few times a week, but my brother/sister-in-law/niece/nephew were also there so it was extra special. I haven't talked to them at all since I got here and I miss them oh-so-much!! Abby and Ethan told me about how school is going, Abby showed me her new haircut, they told me all about fishing with Pop and how their dad shot TWO fish with ONE arrow while they were bow fishing. I got to see Zane and tease him, just a little. I got to see Stephanie and realize that she never got my emails about her birthday, so I got to see her reaction when I gave her her present!
As we were winding down, Stephanie figured out her own password (we'd all been talking on my mom's desktop upstairs) and logged on to skype on her iPad, so for the first time since I moved, I got to see a different background in my house than the hallway by the computer! It was so nice just to see the living room and the kitchen, to be "there" (sort of) in the midst of getting ready for our Good Friday pork roast dinner. Stephanie took me to the back porch to see my dog, my precious Percy-dog. Bless his heart, I don't think he could figure out where my voice was coming from! It was so good to see his happy little face. I miss him as much as I miss anything from home, almost as much as I miss my human family. I wish I could have reached out and scratched his ears like I always do, but I asked Abby to pet him for me.
We talked about this and that, just normal family visiting, until the battery wore down on her iPad. It was such a great gift. I miss lots of things about home, but I really miss just being there for the little, every day things too. Sometimes there's a lot of pressure on a skype-date, to make sure you hit the hilights of your life since the last time you talked. It was so relaxing to feel as though, just for a little bit, I was simply sitting in my kitchen with my mom and my sister while the kids and the menfolk buzzed in and out of the backyard (overhearing things like "Pop... I need you to fish Ethan's frisbee out of the lake.")
I'm so glad that inventions like that exist. I don't know if I could have done this in the years before skype. Those inventions make this homebody feel more comfortable with being on the other side of the globe, 7,000 miles from home. Just for a moment, once in a while, I can pretend that I'm there, even though I look at the dark night sky out my parents' windows as the morning light filters through my own. God bless the Skype inventors and God bless Steve Jobs and the rest of the iPad inventors. They make quite a team. :)
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