Homesick
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Do you think, perhaps, that it would be possible for a man of ninety to becomeI sometimes get homesick. It's not a debilitating kind of homesick, more the creeping, grumbling kind. The kind that dawns on you when you least expect it. When you think, "Gee, I really miss my fam right now. I wonder what they're doing? I wish I could just have dinner with them all."
homesick?
When I first moved away to uni (way back when), I got homesick for the place itself. I wanted to be in my old room, walk around my house and have that 'home' feeling. Over time, that became an idea; you can't simply recreate the past.
I got busy with uni and had a whale of a time and didn't think too much about home for 99% of the time. I had a plan and I knew what I had to do, and just now and then, I'd actually get home to see everyone and, well, be home. Uni was my 'real life'.
After graduation, I moved to Oz. It, too, was 'real life'; the first year I went home more than a few times to visit, and things stayed much the same to uni. Since starting medicine, I've been home for fewer than ten days in the last three years.
Sure, I've had visits from my parents and siblings and been interstate to visit extended family, but, well, there's something about sitting around the dinner table with my nuclear family.
Which is what the gentleman quoted at the outset of this post missed. His family, his surroundings. His 'real life'.
It is an unfortunate but true fact of life that, as they say, "you can never go home again." :(
I have stopped returning to places that I grew up in, as the places are so different that it makes me miss the memory even more because I realise that the memory and feeling is well and truly in the past.
Luckily it isn't quite the same at the family home. I hope you can get home for a break soon. Sometimes a few days/weeks of Mum's/Dad's cooking, company and wine does the world of good. :)
I often lose track of whether I am away from home, or overseas or what. My parents have moved 3 times since I left home (once just across the street, but the other 2 times involved greater distances), which kind of blurs things even though I have lived away from home for 9 years. Now I feel more like where I am is my real life (as opposed to that Colin Hay song) but occasionaly I find myself thinking "how on earth did I end up here?"