I love where I live. Yes, I do.

But I hate how far away this island is from so many I love. My mother, a daughter and a son, and very importantly, my granddaughter, Addie, are all on the other side of the planet, a great distance that feels even more daunting when I long for that little girl.

I had hoped and planned to be in North Carolina when my daughter gave birth, but things didn't turn out that way. Due to some issues, it was necessary to bring Addie into the world a few weeks earlier than anticipated, and an emergency C-secton didn't allow me to get half way around the globe until all the worry was behind us and my daughter was a mother.

By the time I got there, Addie was 10 days old, Jenn was healing well, and everything was under control. Still, it was good to know my input was valued when it came to bathing baby and such ... and I loved being able to provide Grammy care and let my baby, Jenn, sleep late and take naps and relax. (Yes, she was 32-years-old at the time, but my babies are always my babies, no longer how grown they get.)

For anyone who hasn't already heard, I chose to be called "Grammy" because I want Addie to go through her childhood thinking there is an awards show named after me. I love planting joke bombs in kids ... it's such a great moment when the bombs go off and the kid gets the joke. My daughter still groans about one she didn't figure out until after she'd graduated from college!

Knowing I had only 5 weeks of bonding time, I loved up my little grandbaby like crazy, and, as you can see from the photo, we saw eye to eye on everything.

I did a return trip about a year later, but haven't been to the States since. Addie is now five-years-old, and growing up without me as a feature in her life.

I'm missing so much.

Why hasn't someone invented that beamy-uppy thing they had on the Starship Enterprise ... the first one, way back 40 years ago! ... so that I could pop back and forth between Seychelles and Raleigh? How hard can it be? If I could just have one upstairs somewhere ... the closet, perhaps ....after tucking Sam and Cj into bed, I could beam myself over to have lunch with Jen and Addie. (We're 9 hours ahead of EST, so it could work out so well!)

Anyone out there want to put this together for me? It would so help! And I'm sure there'd be a market for such a gadget.