Be Careful What You Wish For

    Friday we drove half the day to meet my daughter on a ten hour drive home from college. We met at some drive through and  I popped in my daughter's car and drove the remaining four hours home.  The plan was to break up the ten hour drive for her, but of course it turned into an opportunity for her to finish some course work. So I drove from Red Bluff, California to the Bay Area while she furiously typed away on her laptop,  finishing up some late assignment, cradled in her lap, sprinkling our monotonous drive w/animated asides.
    She's home now, for the duration of the summer. Sister and brother are reunited. When she left three years ago the iceberg was just beginning to thaw between them.  Her love of pop culture, her  constant squeals/yells of excitement, her animal rights activism, and women's rights platforms were just beginning to not irritate him quite as much.   In a scant 24 hours both of them have re-assumed their sibling roles, that invisible hierarchy, just as if they have never been apart.
   And the random socks are in the living room (where she did her yoga) and her threaders are by my sink ('' 'Cause your mirror is better,") and the idle talk about a certain song, or a new TikTok is beyond my comprehension but I listen intently, nod when appropriate, and feign understanding.  I so desperately want to belong to their club.
   And I sleep better when they are home.  I love to see their doors creaked open at night, engrossed independently in their own worlds yet  inexplicably intertwined together unbeknownst to them yet so clearly obvious to me.