"Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was." -Jodi Picoult
I don't remember where, but I read somewhere once something to the effect of "homesickness isn't about the place or things you're missing, but about the people," and to be honest, my post today is a slight challenge to that. I mean obviously I miss the people; my family, my friends, my pets too. But I think it can definitely be about the place and experiences as well. This past week was Christmas, and while I deeply missed seeing my family, I also missed the things we do together. Baking and decorating cookies, the caramels my grandma makes, things like that.
This past week at home (I'm from Minnesota, in case anyone reading this was unaware), for example, the weather wasn't too bad overall. Almost always above freezing, not really much new snow. Yesterday, however, they got a huge batch of freezing rain, and it was just cold enough to coat basically the entirety of the roads and sidewalks with a thick layer of ice thick enough to -and I swear to God this is the honest truth- ice skate on it. It was so slippery there were over 350 crashes (luckily, almost none of them had any serious injuries or fatalities) in 5 hours in Minnesota alone. People were ice skating to the store, playing hockey on the street, literally helping push cars while they wore skates.
Watching this all happen across social media caused a pretty big pang of homesickness to crop up. England doesn't really freeze much, and the city I'm in hasn't seen snow in years. I actually thought I wouldn't miss it (or the headache driving in that kind of weather it causes) but I do! Winter has such an ingrained cultural difference at home and it's something I deeply miss.
Pretty much everything snow related is making me long for sledding, for skiing, for snowball fights. For just throwing yourself down into the freshly fallen snow and making a perfect snow angel -and then ruining it immediately because it's impossible to stand up out of that without a hand, an elbow, or a stray foot messing up the outline.
Another thing that caused some unexpected homesickness the other day was when my housemates and I went to a Greek restaurant. For those who know me, I'm not the most adventurous of eaters, and I typically stick to what I know. My family, on the other hand, loooooves Greek and Mediterranean foods, hummus (or houmous) especially. I've never really seem the hype for it, but again, not very adventurous. Either way, when we got to the restaurant, I actually insisted the houmous be one of the things we ordered, and ate quite a lot of it just because it reminded me of home. (We also got a LOT of other food and it was all delicious, so catch me trying new things more often maybe!) I think this restaurant was a blessing to settle me, and remind me that even 4,000 miles away, there will always be a place you can find a piece of home.
"No matter where I go, I’ll never forget home. I can feel its heartbeat a thousand miles away. Home is the place where I grew my wings." -Brenda Sutton Rose