Together.

A few weeks ago, Max and I stood on a little bamboo bridge overlooking a river in Laos and watched a flock of ducklings swim passed. He pointed them out to me and said "look, it's a family." "How do you know it's a family?", I asked him. "Because they're together", he said.

For 9 weeks, we took "together" to a new level. We travelled together, we ate together, we swam together, we experienced things together, and we just existed...together. More than anything else, that is what will anchor the memories of this trip for me. Elephants and snakes and villages and zip-lines were incredible as individual experiences, but it was the way we reinforced the nuts and bolts of our family that made the journey what it was.

We've been home for one week, and I've already seen how easy it is to fall into our familiar patterns and routines. Our day to day life doesn't allow for a lot of togetherness. Work days run into the dinner hour, sports schedules run into the bedtime hour, and social plans pull us all into different orbits that only sometimes intersect. Our lives are full of great things and people, but I am really missing the unscheduled and uninterrupted time we had on our trip. Even with the best of intentions, it's hard to recreate now that we're home.

I have realized that togetherness is going to take work. It's going to mean saying no to things we really want to do. It's going to make me feel like I'm letting other people down sometimes. It's going to mean people will have to wait longer for me to respond to their emails. It's going to mean pushing pause on my Netflix show to have a conversation, even when I've been talking to people all day long and just need to be quiet. And I have no doubt that all of the sacrifices and adjustments will be 100% worth it. Like those little ducklings in Laos, we just have to stick together.