My biggest wish for my family is that we could all live in the same city again, or at least in the same country. I'm thirty-four and I work as an IT consultant in Toronto, but my parents are still in Lahore and my sister and her husband are in Dubai.
It involves pretty much everyone. My parents are in their late sixties now, and my father has had some heart trouble, so I worry about them being on their own. My sister has two little boys who barely know their grandparents except through video calls, and my own daughter is three and has met her cousins only twice.
Realistically, I don't think it'll fully come true, at least not soon. Our jobs are where they are, and visas make everything complicated. But I'm hopeful about a smaller version of it. My parents might come and stay with us for six months at a time, and we've talked about all meeting up in Lahore every winter.
The reason it matters so much is that I grew up surrounded by family. My grandparents lived upstairs, aunts dropped in every evening, and there was always someone to help or to tell you off. I feel my daughter is missing that completely. Video calls are better than nothing, but you can't hug someone through a screen or notice when they're unwell. I also feel a bit guilty that my parents spent their lives raising us and now we're scattered across the world. So for me this wish isn't really about convenience; it's about not losing the closeness we used to have.