Forgetting the distance

I'm sitting in a Starbucks right now, waiting to meet my boss. He's in town because he's been hired as an expert witness in a special education lawsuit that the Hawaii Department of Education is involved in, and he's enlisted me to help him work out the issues he's being asked to opine on, and to write his expert report.

Last night Jason and I met him out for dinner at a local dive for some yummy Hawaiian barbecue. It was the first time I'd seen him in 14 months, since we did the oral argument last June in California, a realization that shocked me. Because I talk to him fairly often, and we communicate by email, and I work for him, after all. So my days are spent creating work product for which he pays me.

He was talking about how long the plane ride was, and how you forget how far away Hawaii is until you try to get there. It's so true, and something that I do my best to block out. I spend so much time online or on the phone, feeling connected with the world. Technology and modern communications do make the world so much smaller. I can get on Skype and have a video conference with my friend Elizabeth in Norway, and we can chat and look at each other as if we were sitting across a table having coffee. I can get on Facebook and know what friends on the West Coast and the East Coast and everywhere in between are doing, not to mention the folks in Israel and Paris and India that I also keep up with. I talk to my mother every day, and to my grandparents and brothers almost every week. And then there are the Australia relatives, who we also keep in contact with via email and telephone and Skype and what have you.

So I forget. I forget how far away I am from them, and how long it's been since I've seen them, and how long it's going to be until I can see them again.

Because when I think about that, it hurts.