Expat Life: Traveling 'Home'

Nebraska - Here I am sitting on my parents' old porch swing in my sleepy hometown.

Instead of reading my old Sweet Valley High paperbacks from my youth, I'm typing on my laptop. I am back 'home' in one sense.

I spent many, many hours sitting on this porch swing, often reading, when I was growing up.

I'm happy to say my dad made it safely through his two heart surgeries. But it's not going to be an easy road to recovery.

My dad has two incisions that need to heal so he must scuffle through the house using a walker instead of a cane. He must avoid putting any weight on either side. He needs pretty much full-time care to do the most basic things such as eating, getting from room to room and just getting out of bed.

To complicate matters, my parents' house was built in the 1920s with small rooms and odd angles. Getting around with a walker certainly wasn't in the house's cards.

I'm doing whatever I can here to help out from running to doctor's appointments, buying groceries, and cooking dinner to fetching the morning newspaper, finding dad's reading glasses, working out in the garden and picking up as needed. My mom has her hands full so I'm glad my expat life affords me the ability to travel home for awhile. I'm definitely needed here.

Though I may call Istanbul home now and relate more to the East Coast, this is where my roots are. This is where my family lives.

At the end of the day, I'm still a Midwestern girl at heart.