What It Really Feels Like to Come Home to America

He said it under his breath, but I still heard him. “I wish I could just take a year off from work and travel with my family. It must be nice.” How could I begin to explain that my family was not going on a vacation, that the upcoming year would entail the hardest kind of work and intense stress as we traveled not for fun but for the funds to continue our mission? We were gearing up to leave the field for a year of itineration, and clearly my friend with the muffled comment wasn’t the only one to grossly misunderstand these next steps.