I will be traveling alone to India for the first time since I immigrated to America. For most people there is nothing remarkable about such an event but it created a heightened sense of anxiety about the trip for me - beyond the usual that travel brings about these days. I will be meeting family members I have not seen in close to thirty years - people who were once close and then drifted away largely due to physical distance also drift from what used to be a joint family once. I realized that I don't know much about my cousin I am going to meet since I last saw when she was still in high school - that is going to far and apart from who I will be meeting now. Since I don't do social media, I have no idea how time has shaped her. But I wanted to get a little something because she is still my baby sister. After hours and days of struggle I landed on a gift that felt right. I won't know until I give it to her and even then I might not. 

We plan to meet a couple of days after I arrive - it will be in a sense a return to childhood. My parents, her parents (my uncle and aunt) and the two of us. She is child-free and career demands has her living away from her husband for the last few months. I tried to imagine as I packed my bags how it will be to sit around the dining table at my parents' home as we had done years ago in the same configuration as we will find ourselves in now. If that will somehow make return to a time and place in our lives left far behind. My aunt used to be a force of nature back then - its the mental image I still have of her. She has been ailing for a good decade and the years have caught up to her. My uncle used to be a thoughtful man prone to making pithy observations about life even in casual conversation. It was as if he examined what was around him a lot closer than the rest of us did, leading to discoveries that we would have never made. C herself when I last spoke to her sounded like an astute woman - that was my strongest impression from our short conversation.