Normally a day that includes spending time at LAX would not be cause to celebrate. Today is different, however. Nancy\u2019s coming home.<\/p>\n
Nancy is my expat sister. Younger than me by two years, she\u2019s spent her entire adult life living abroad.\u00a0The earlier years of her life were spent being a thorn in my side.<\/p>\n
For starters, she was the favorite child of our parents who didn\u2019t conceal their pride in Nancy\u2019s intellectual achievements.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until midlife that I realized Nancy had suffered as much as I had because of the preferential treatment she\u2019d received (but never solicited).<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t what drove me the craziest, however. What perplexed me the most was the certainty with which Nancy choose her path in life. From the moment she learned about archaeology, she knew where she was headed.<\/p>\n
How, I marveled, could a 14-year-old know such a thing? I was older, after all, and totally clueless. I remained that way until the end of my third decade. But not Nancy.<\/p>\n
While I was floundering and frustrated, Nancy was mastering Latin, Greek and Italian. While I was fearing I\u2019d be spending my life in Janesville, Minnesota, Nancy was setting up her apartment in Athens, Greece.<\/p>\n
Years passed with irregular and infrequent contact. Then things began to change.<\/p>\n
One by one, family members began making trips to Greece to visit her. They\u2019d return filled with enthusiasm, bearing stacks of photos of ruins and what looked to me like rubble piles.<\/p>\n
I was the last person in the WInter clan to make the trip myself. It was eye-opening and life-changing. It was the first of several visits I made to her adopted homeland, including the one I made when Nancy was hospitalized and needed a bit of backup.<\/p>\n