When you live in an austere and insecure environment far from home, home begins to take on a sort of sitcom quality. Problems come-up and are solved between phone calls. The furniture is better, there’s art on the walls and though you know it’s not true, there’ s a laugh track going somewhere in the background.

In addition to there being no real problems at home, there is also the sense that time hits a pause button between visits. You know things are going on, but as you’ve not seen them or participated in them, they’re inconsequential or incidental to your storyline.

Most of the time, this is the sense you have of home. The sense is shattered when life at home is not idyllic. The first week I was in Kabul I got a panic-stricken email from my mother informing me that my dog had run away – she’d lost my roommates number and was leaving the house for an appointment, so could I please call my roommate and get it sorted out.

Kabul is 11.5 hrs ahead of the Pacific Northwest, email access (at that point) was sporadic, so I received the email hours after the event. My world here crumbled. There was absolutely nothing I could do to gain time – or to resolve the issue other than to begin placing panicked calls of my own. Fortunately this story had a happy ending.

It’s happening again – though this time it’s my niece & nephew. Their young lives are being systematically ripped apart and there is NOTHING I can do about it. Though the truth is there would be little I could do were I at home, the distance is devastating. When home is burning what shatters me is the distance.