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The Homesick Post
By Billy | July 29, 2011
Everyone asks me if I’m homesick. Such a question doesn’t but me as it would have two years ago; people should know that I can hardly comfortably explain my feeligns in my mother tongue and they should expect that I can’t convey how I feel in Denglisch. I should know people don’t know that about me and not expect them to.
The answer I give them is a “I’m not homesick, but I think about my home across the sea a lot.”
That’s a pretty comprehensive answer, actually. This post is that answer exploded into whatever happens from now until I push the “Publish” button. Rarely do I give the title before I post, but this post I have already decided and will now only surprise myself with the content.
Four months ago… I was in Austria. One year divided by 4 months is 3. That is a full 1/3rd of a year. I have lived in Austria for more than the length of an entire season. I came here and it snowed every so often, and already the grain fields have become guilded and stiff. (come to think of it, I think I’m always behind the season. I’m always surprised when the snow melts in that way that you know you wont see snow again for a while, and right now I’m astounded that it’s already August)
I’m not missing my home, I’m just thinking of it all the time.
Maybe that’s me kidding myself. Maybe that’s me missing it. I don’t know. I usually focus on the things that I don’t miss; maybe I need to, maybe I’m too critical. In fact, I express an awful lot of criticism for the US. Even while I do that, I’m the only one who is allowed to offer this criticism. No, we don’t all eat only McDonalds, and no, we’re not all warmongers. (right?) These are things that I have been thinking about but haven’t formed into conscious thought until just now.
I do miss people. I miss my family. I miss my brother whom I haven’t seen in far too long and with whom I haven’t had and endless stretch of time to forget about the future during since the future we pretended didn’t exist happened. I miss my sister and her enlightening points of view; things she tells me in two sentences are thoughts I couldn’t fathom when I was her age. I miss my parents and their many quirks, but most of all their example, kind words, and the comfortable space they create — even if it’s just in the potential that I can come home whenever I want from wherever I’ve gone and whatever I’ve done and it wont matter.
I miss my partner, Miranda, who reminds me best who I am, want to be, and am capable of being. I miss my friends from Harrisonburg, from Fairfax, and from the mountains. I miss their motivation to accomplish things, their ability to have fun, and their music. I miss banjos and mandolins and fiddles and guitars and and how they found a way into the world I found myself in. I miss the concept of a front porch, which I haven’t participated in while in Europe. I miss sitting on a porch drinking wine, plucking a guitar, telling my friends to quit smoking, while we do absolutely nothing.
I miss having a predictable schedule which includes scheduled down time. I think this comes from being with children every day. Living with children is a full time job. Not full time like those silly 40 hours a week jobs, but full time like the kids aren’t even in the house right now and I am in some way responsible for them. Even if I don’t have a supervisor to tell me that’s so, I have my conscience to tell me.
Come to think of it, I love my United Statesian life. I will have so much more to offer it when I come home, which is certainly one of the reasons I am staying here, but there’s really great things about my life across the puddle. Hm.
All this fizzled out. I think I’m going to go sit in the church across the street for a while.
Topics: This is my life | Comments Off on The Homesick Post
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