My children were off playing with our Ayi. They had a regular playdate with some kids in our building’s indoor playroom.

I had a brief moment, an intermission if you will, to catch up on some reading. My open tabs were slowing down the already slow wifi connection. The browser needed an update, but I didn’t want to lose the articles.

There was a piece by Tom Nichols, someone I’ve grown to admire. Someone I know I’d enjoy drinking with and probably have drop-down drag-out fights over points of view. Someone I’d invite back because I liked the way he thought, even if I didn’t always agree.

And another from a soccer analyst I admire. Another person I don’t always agree with but know that they care about the game and the work they do.

Then I got to two pieces about the openings of two different Iranian restaurants in two of my favorite cities–Washington, DC, and New York City.

Joon, opened recently in Vienna, VA, just outside America’s Capital, was highlighted by Washington Post's Tom Sietsema. The restaurant builds on the founders’ expertise in the kitchen and in restaurants throughout the city and tries to give patrons a glimpse of Persian hospitality while stepping out of the cliched menus of kabob and rice.

Nasrin’s Kitchen opened in New York City and received a warm write-up in the New Yorker. The menu there leans heavily on the owner’s old family recipes.

I’m definitely hitting up both of them when I’m back on the East Coast.

In the middle of reading the last two pieces, though, there was a wave of melancholia. I thought it would be momentary, brief. It stuck around like a bad bandaid. Gooey and mushy, but never quite able to shake it.

As small tears began to form in the corners of my eye, I realized for the first time in two months I missed my friends—the goofy ones, the serious ones, the ones who challenged me to be a better person.

Reading the write-ups about the Iranian restaurants, both places, in different circumstances, that I’d likely visit with those same friends, drew that out of me. I’d kept it hidden somewhere in the back of my consciousness.

I moved to a different tab hoping to stave off the inevitable because what southern boy will allow himself to get too emotional about food and friends? College sports? Yes. Horse racing? Of course. But food and friends? Things can be delicious and elicit waves of nostalgia, but not like this. Not something bordering on an ugly cry.

Holy shit, it’s coming back again. Got damp it (read that differently than you should).

The shift in topics helped, kind of. But in every quiet moment between then and now, it returns. This deep sense of emptiness. There was a realization that my race to write every fucking thing I see and tell it to the whole fucking world was some sort of desire to fill that space. To engage in ways that I usually would but through different means.

This is the life that my wife and I have chosen for ourselves. For the foreseeable future, we will bounce around the globe–every two to three years in a new place. We made this choice knowing full well that this was what it would mean. And in many ways, the rushed and harried exit staved off the inevitable. Now, two months into our first posting, as I’m finally settling in, reading two pieces about Iranian restaurants has dug up some feelings I’ve determined to hide.

Don’t worry, though. We’re not coming back. It just means I love and miss yall. And that I decided to be a tiny bit vulnerable, which isn’t my normal state.