the long-distance daughter blues
a decade away from home, a surprise birthday, and the ache of nostalgia.
Hi friends — this is a republication of an essay originally written in June 2025, back when only a select few of you subscribers were around to see it. For more on why I’m doing summer reruns, read last week’s piece. This is still one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. Enjoy!
You may have noticed that I missed posting last week. In my head, my tiny audience was refreshing their inboxes at 11:59 p.m. last Monday, gnashing their teeth and pulling their hair in despair at the lack of content. el oh el.
In the likely event that you didn’t notice my absence, here’s what happened: I visited Minnesota to surprise my grandmother at her 90th (!!) birthday party two Fridays ago, but before I’d even gotten on the plane there, I started to develop some migraine symptoms. I had my fun little time and took my little migraine meds, but the thing stuck around. For days. I had to push my return flight a day late because I was too sick to get on a plane. The whole time, I kept thinking about this little substack that I’ve grown so attached to over the past couple months :’) tomorrow, I’ll feel well enough to finish writing it, I kept telling myself.
As it turned out, that extremely treatment-resistant migraine kicked me even harder in the ass after a full week of thinking the next day would just be better. Last Thursday, I started showing some really concerning symptoms (sudden onset headache that felt “different” than my usual migraine, blurry vision, confusion) and my husband rushed me to the ER. After an IV drip they called the “migraine cocktail”—which in my confused state I assumed I’d be drinking in a margarita glass with a lime on the side, yikes—I started to stabilize.
Sooo…Why am I telling you this? You didn’t come here to hear about my health problems! My dear reader, I am setting the scene in an incredibly verbose and unnecessary way because none of my newspaper editors ever let me take my desired creative liberties. Now, I have no editor, so I fear we’re all stuck with it! Don’t blame me; you’re the one who signed up for this.
note: I try not to be so apologetic or self-effacing (like the above paragraph) anymore, even though writing this substack still often feels self-indulgent. I read this now and think, ‘girl, get over yourself and just write!’ Also, that migraine was no joke. thankfully it’s never gotten so bad again since.
The case of the missing daughter
My grandmother’s home in suburban Minnesota, where she’s lived for nearly 30 years, is less a museum than a living, breathing testament to the family she’s created. She and my grandfather were both only children, so when they got married in the 1950s they knew they wanted to have a big family together.
You can feel that desire—for a life filled with children and children’s children—as soon as you walk into that house. Photo evidence of my grandma’s six kids and eleven grandkids covers the wall of her living room. Selfies from family dinners, brothers sneaking peace signs behind sisters’ heads. Formal photos of some of the younger grandkids, clearly forced to pose by their mothers. My grandfather, who died last year, is in many of the pictures. The house feels just a little emptier without his booming presence.
As I helped my mom and aunts set up for my grandma’s 90th birthday party last weekend (she was indeed surprised and delighted I showed up, by the way), I started to notice something about the photos hanging on the walls and propped up next to table lamps. I realized that I didn’t recognize many of those memories. I wasn’t in the photos, despite most of our family always having gotten along. The case of the missing daughter, if you will.
Let me just solve that mystery now—it really isn’t that dramatic: I left Minnesota for college in Chicago almost exactly ten years ago, and moved right to DC after that. No bad blood there. But for ten years, I’d only seen most of my family on major holidays. Those Mother’s Day brunches and random get-togethers prompted lots of photos, but I wasn’t in them. And for a long time, until my younger cousin recently went to college, I was the only person—in my entire extended family, in multiple generations—to leave the state for school.
I started silently spiraling then. This wasn’t the same stomach-dropping dread we’ve all faced when a group photo of our friends shows up on social media and we realize we weren’t invited. It wasn’t new, either—I’d long since resigned myself to the fact that I would miss out on a lot of things living far from home, from birthdays and graduations to illnesses and death—but it was then that I realized the most reliable things that have brought me to Minnesota over the last few years besides Christmas have been funerals.
“Hello, you’ve reached Jim and Mary,” I froze in shock—my dead grandfather’s disembodied voice echoed through the house. “We’re not home right now, so please leave a message after the beep. Buh-bye.”
Tears pricked my eyes and I looked over at my grandma.
“You kept him on the answering machine?”
“I like getting to hear him throughout the day,” she smiled. I’d wondered why the woman with the brand-new iPhone kept her landline which only seemed to attract spam calls. I guess I got my answer.
In that moment, I realized that as a long distance daughter I’ve been missing the small things, too. At nineteen, I wanted independence. I got that in spades, but I also got to be 28 without knowing that my grandma has listened to my grandpa’s tinny voice on the answering machine for the last year just to keep his memory around.
Do you ever feel a longing for memories you’ve never collected? Of experiences you never had? That’s how I felt, looking at those photos and hearing my grandpa’s voice.
note: re-reading this made me cry again. I miss my grandpa.
I certainly got some of what I wanted when I moved to DC: a high-profile reporting job in the Capitol [that I ended up hating], enough money to live on my own in a cool downtown apartment [for a short time], a firmer sense of my identity [that went a much different way than I expected], and a corgi [sassier than even I expected].
I also got some of what I didn’t necessarily dream of that became a dreamy part of life: a husband [still waiting on the full wedding part], a plant and gardening obsession [that said husband begrudgingly supports], and illegally fired from a federal job [ok, that part isn’t super dreamy, but I’m building something great from the ashes].
It’s hard to say if any of these things would have happened had I stayed in Minnesota. Impossible, really. But the disdain I once felt for the small town I grew up in feels a little foolish now. Childish, even. Because as a child, all I ever wanted to do was grow up, leave, and create my own life. Ten years later, I’ve done all that.
Maybe it’s that ten-year mark, but something about being a long distance daughter for so long is really hitting now.
Nostalgia is the cruelest drug
During the brief moments when the migraine meds kicked in the rest of that weekend, I got to enjoy the time with my parents and brother. We went to the best pizza place in Minneapolis for their pickle pizza, walked to a new cafe near my parents’ house where we saw the famous conjoined twins (hyper-local reference, if you know who I’m talking about please let me know), and biked around some of our old neighborhood spots.
The cornfield we grew up next to is now part Whole Foods / CycleBar / SurLeTable, part new neighborhood. The elementary + middle school building we went to is now just a middle school as the district adjusted to more kids. The golf course lost almost all its trees to an ash-borer infestation. A brand-new bus line connects our suburb to the Twin Cities for the first time.
All of these changes seemed so gradual until I realized that ten years had made this place almost unrecognizable. But then I see that that one sketchy IHOP still stands, and my mom still plants flowers every spring, and my dad still checks his bird houses for wood duck eggs, and they both celebrate the rhubarb stalks growing tall and sour at the edge of their yard.
I had my husband read this post when I was about 3/4 of the way through, and I asked him what he thought the throughline is this week. He hummed and looked back through it until he found that line at the beginning:
The whole time, I kept thinking about this little substack that I’ve grown so attached to over the past couple months :’) tomorrow, I’ll feel well enough to finish writing it, I kept thinking.
“That’s your throughline,” he said. “Minnesota is like your ‘little substack.’ You haven’t realized how attached you are to it, but it’s been creeping back into your mind. Sometime, maybe soon, you’ll feel ready to go back again.”
if you’re new here: this substack used to be called Throughlines.
“You know what,” I told him, “No notes. I’m running with that.”
It wasn’t long into the weekend that I realized many of the aspects of this simple summer life, many of the things I ran from at 19, are the things that I’m drawn to so strongly now.
How many times have I wished that my little metro-area-back-patio-garden was bigger for my vegetable garden, that I had a yard for the dogs, that I could walk barefoot through the grass again without worrying about broken glass stabbing my heels? Those things are all back in Minnesota, really, in the house that I grew up in. My parents had it all along, but for whatever reason, be it youth or rebellion or time, I wasn’t able to see that until now.
Later on that weekend, as I was lying on my parents’ couch in extreme head and stomach pain and falling in and out of sleep, I found myself thinking about how lucky I was, at age 28, to have my mom take care of me while I was sick. Things like that don’t really happen as you get older.
On the worst night of my illness, I woke up from stomach pain at 3 a.m. and walked to the kitchen for some gatorade. I found my mom out in the living room watching TV. She was worried about me, she said. She couldn’t sleep. I stayed out there with her the rest of the night—I couldn’t sleep either, as it turned out—and we watched shows together, just like we’d done when I’d stay home sick from school as a kid.
The next morning (or I guess a few hours later) she made me tea and my dad made me toast, and I wondered if this would be the last time that they’d ever take care of me like this when I’m sick. I wondered if this was my last little sparkle of childhood before it winks out for good. It seems likely: I live a thousand miles away, I’m almost thirty, and I have a partner who vowed to care for me in sickness and in health.
I’m a long-distance daughter. At least, that’s who I am for now.
-Ashley
P.S. If this made you laugh, nod in agreement, or immediately think of someone who needs to read it, go ahead and restack or tap that little heart—it helps more people (including the lurkers) find this. Or, if you’re feeling generous, become a paid subscriber! No presh, though. I’m glad you’re here either way.
This hit so hard as someone who’s lived 3,000 miles away from their family for the last almost 4 years. Thank you for putting my feelings into words 😮💨🫶🏽
I went to boarding school when I was 14, then I came to DC for college at 18 and never left. When I turned 29, I realized I had officially lived away from home longer than I had ever lived there. It was a crazy realization that made me feel so many things, including proud and honestly a little devastated - proud of my independence and the life it has afforded me and devastated at the thought of all the things I have and will continue to miss, especially time with my parents.
Two parts of this newsletter really resonated: "At nineteen, I wanted independence. I got that in spades, but I also got to be 28 without knowing that my grandma has listened to my grandpa’s tinny voice on the answering machine for the last year just to keep his memory around" and "But the disdain I once felt for the small town I grew up in feels a little foolish now. Childish, even. Because as a child, all I ever wanted to do was grow up, leave, and create my own life. Ten years later, I’ve done all that". I think you really captured the struggle.