Edit desk: Overcoming the distance

In elementary school, I would hear my friends talk about their families. I would hear about how they stayed at their grandparents’ house over the weekend, that their cousins came over for a holiday or that they went to their aunt’s wedding. 

I never had this. 

The only family I have in the United States are my mom, my dad and my brother. 

One side of my family lives over 5,000 miles away in Tel Aviv, Israel, and the other side lives almost 10,000 miles away in Sydney, Australia. 

It was normal for me to only see my extended family twice a year and to spend special occasions and holidays with only my immediate family.

We were able to create our own traditions. We go out for dinner on Thanksgiving, my mom makes French toast for my whole family every Saturday with leftover challah bread from Shabbat the night before and we eat breakfast for dinner every Sunday night. 

I love my close-knit family, but sometimes it feels like something is missing, especially when I’m surrounded by my friends and the media that portrays different kinds of families. 

While not “dysfunctional,” my family is definitely unique, since we are located all over the world. 

But while we are far apart geographically, we are still close.

Phone calls and FaceTimes replace soccer games and Thanksgiving dinners. A card in the mail replaces a homemade birthday cake. 

I’ve had to adjust my views as to what a “normal” family is.

There is the version of family it seems everyone around me has: a close-knit immediate family with cousins in a neighboring town and their furthest grandparents living in Florida.

The distance between me and my family members has taught me to value everyone and everything I have around me.

Having family across the world has also taught me to be more accepting of other cultures and to be more adventurous.

I want to travel and see the world beyond being a visitor. I want to truly experience other cultures and know what it is like to live in another country.

I bring this adventurous attitude to everything I do. 

When I was 16 years old, I went on an organized trip to Spain without knowing anyone else. I traveled across the world for one month with total strangers.  

In the Spring 2023 semester I will be studying abroad in Copenhagen, a city I have never been to before, without any close friends or family nearby. I could not be more excited.

If I am passionate about something I need to know everything about the topic. I can’t pass up the chance to see my favorite artists, read my favorite books or sit down for hours watching YouTube videos about the topic. 

When seeing the people you love is always carefully scheduled and days are meticulously planned out to squeeze the most out of them, it’s difficult to understand how one “spends the day relaxing at the grandparents’ house.”

Trips to my grandparents’ house are filled with the stress of packing for another hemisphere, long flights with the fear of missing a connecting flight and even some guilt about living so far away. 

To me, Australia is not an exotic land with large spiders and kangaroos hopping about. It is the place where my grandmother goes to the mall for hours every day, where my grandfather would secretly buy me and my brother sundaes from McDonalds and where my cousins had to wear ugly school uniforms. 

I am fortunate enough to have been able to visit my extended family in Sydney and Melbourne almost every year growing up. Sydney is like a second home for me. I can get around the city without a map, I know my favorite restaurants and coffee shops and I have friends who I have kept in touch with for years. 

But while I love having a second city that welcomes me, I still can’t help but feel jealous when people talk about seeing their family regularly.

Even so, everything that my family does in New York reaches Sydney and Tel Aviv and is met with encouragement and support.  

A family is not measured by how close they live to one another but by how they communicate and show their love for each other.