The Best Day: Heading home after doing good work while away.

My tummy’s beginning to bubble with excitement. It’s the last day of work during my travels overseas before returning home.

It’s been wonderful. We’ve accomplished a lot and I believe I may have changed the face of coping with autism and other brain disorders. Changed them for the better. Made a difference in the world again. But I want to go home.

This happens every time I travel.

I’m focused, I work hard, I enjoy every moment of it. And on the last day the truth begins to percolate in my tummy: You wish you were home and you will be soon.

I allow the great-grandchildren’s faces into my mind’s eye. I send a message to my grandson. The call of home can be strong. Today, I will allow it in.

I’m glad I travel. It was easier this time than others, because now my most challenged son, Dar, travels with me and I don’t have that low grade anxiety of wondering what’s happening for him. (Join Dar and I via our videos on YouTube by clicking this link: Autism on the Road.) I love Dar. I love traveling with Dar. But I love them all the most and I want to be near them.

The great-grandkids, the grandkids, the kids. Familiar soil, familiar food, these do matter. But the hugs, cries, laughter, and “please buy me something” pull of family members is the strongest for me.

So, today is a great day.

My last day of work.

My mind travels over all the things I’ve accomplished in the last seventeen days. Forty-three videos on various techniques for autism, speaking to teachers, training new people who know nothing at all, untraining people who’ve been misled by the usual ideas around autism, spreading the word about what matters and what doesn’t, hands on helping people that are challenged and yet brilliant at the same time. I’ve created things while I was away that will live beyond me and I should be proud, and I am.

But more than anything I feel the tickle in my tummy that’s trying to reach my chest and say, “It’s almost home day, it’s almost home day. You don’t have to stay away anymore.”

This is the best day.

Tomorrow’s good. I’ll be on a plane for almost fourteen hours and I’ll be aware of my return, but I’ll get jet-lagged and go through that process next. So today, and about three days from now, are the best days of all.

I will enjoy.

As I struggle through the process coming up of adjusting to different time zones again, I’ll pass my mind over all I accomplished and know it was worth it.

Today is the best day.