I came home to the US to visit my Dad. There he is – in all his rakish charm. He looks more Irish every time I see him. The sparkling blue eyes, the bright white hair, the elfish smile.

And he’s not the only one I get to meet. I have this amazing family in America – our two older children, my sisters and brothers, my sisters- and brothers-in-law. A host of friends.

I love these visits.

I slip back into my life here as if I have never left. There are the odd quirks I have picked up unknowingly in my years in India (the head wag, the sing-song, the easy assumptions about boundaries) which occasionally emerge as a reminder of my other life – but mostly I make the transition like a fish released into a sweet, deep lake.

I drink coffee while I drive (and I drive so carefully and so well). I use the ATMs. I listen to NPR and the classical station. My brother-in-law and my nephews sing Irish folk songs and I sing along. I have wine every evening in front of the fire.  I borrow clothes from my sisters and my daughter. I trade stories, recycle old jokes and share memories. I am home.

And yet, I’m not. My home is also thousands of miles away in a house my husband and I have built. I speak another language there, and not only because I am speaking in Hindi. I use the familiar and occasionally the honorific. I touch my elders’ feet. I drive like a maniac. I wear different clothes, eat different food and walk through the world with an entirely different frame of mind.

I’m happy in both places. But in each one, I feel alive in different ways, compelled by different forces, connected to different frequencies and answerable to different expectations.

It’s a way to live.

But the separations and the constant partings, the longings and the divided loyalties – oh! they take their toll. At the heart of it – this life between two worlds – is an inability to share some piece of what is central to my life with some people who are crucial to it.

In both worlds, on both sides.

A childhood forever off-limits to adult friends in India who cannot imagine its wonders and necessities, its Christmas music and the uncle who called me Yo Yo and the other one who taught me to drive and who would shoot me in the foot if he saw how I drive here, and the sisters who hold my heart and soul in their hands and who would give their lives to protect me.

An adult life of fewer comforts and deeper joys, of picnics on the roof and Thums-Up 2 into 3, forever out of reach to childhood loves in America who want the best for me and who worry about seat-belts and hot showers and health care and the lack thereof.

And my life as the bridge, the passage-way, the one who takes it here and sends it there, who welcomes the nieces and nephews for their GAP years and sends them back a little wiser about their mothers and fathers and cousins who grew up here but now are there.

And then at the heart of it all is that other cousin – the one who started here and will always be here and whose sweet little life is upheld by all that is great about India (nurture, loyalty, tradition, simplicity) and inspired and sustained by all that is great about America (innovation, creativity, systems, wealth).

It is Moy Moy who keeps me here and it is Moy Moy who keeps everyone else coming back to see just how she does it. She is the link between the past and the future, between the children who have moved on and the parents who have remained, between the good in both worlds which is all we will ever have and all that will ever matter.

Creating the family which now encircles and supports her – in India and in America – is our greatest achievement and our dearest joy.