By Tabi Upton, Mind Matters

A few days ago, my parents finally returned from a three-year sojourn to Africa. Family members gathered at Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport to watch them emerged bewildered, jet-lagged and happy from the plane.

They had endured a 20-hour flight but soon revived themselves enough to greet friends, neighbors and others who had come to say hello.

Soon, they regained their trademark exuberant “never-meet-a-stranger” energy and talked and laughed their way through the hours.

I was amazed by them and later reflected on what their absence had meant for me and my two siblings, their own sisters and brothers, grandchildren and friends. The hardest times for me were the days just before they left.

I applauded their desire to serve overseas — something they had talked and dreamed about since they first met as teenagers — but I lamented the possibility of life without them. Not that I had never been away from them.

I felt fine to travel and even live far from home, I’d just always counted on them staying put. I felt safe when I knew where they were and that I could get back to them in a reasonable time.

Their leaving brought up all sorts of new issues for me that I had to figure out how to resolve: How do I do holidays? Who do I call if my roof falls down? What if something prevents their return? What do I do when I want to see them and just can’t?

I discovered how to manage each of these situations and make peace with them. My siblings and I learned to discuss problems and support each other independently of our parents.

I’ve enjoyed several holidays with friends and on trips out of town. Wonderful guy friends have graciously hauled things over and back, and given me free, or cheap, labor.

Family friends offered to be my temporary mothers. In one humorous letter to Mama one Mother’s Day, I told her all the ways I had become like her (the details of which shall remain our little secrets), and we both had a good laugh.

There were hard lessons that we had to fight our way through also. Stateside, our family endured strained relationships, a sudden relocation, cross-continental arguments, financial hardships, misunderstandings, and the like.

Though tempted to return to help manage the storms, my parents did not, and this was the best choice they could have made. Through these challenges we learned to survive disappointment, to love each other despite our sometimes resistant hearts, and to forgive and move forward. There were good things that resulted: purposeful career changes, surprise friendships made, and help received from unexpected sources.

On my parents‚ end, they learned to embrace a whole new world, made new friends, wept over newfound problems and challenges. Though they missed home, they will also miss those they met, bonded with, and left behind. At first I didn’t want to share them with others, but over the past months their middle daughter has grown in relational generosity. My parents are mother and father to sisters and brothers I have never met, and this makes me very proud. But more than anything, I’m just happy to have them home.

Tabi Upton, MA, is a therapist at New Beginnings Counseling Center. Email her at tabiupton@bellsouth.net