Home Sick
This past week I have been enjoying semi-celebrity status. I walk through Harvard Square, my old stomping grounds, and pop inside a storefront door to be met by shrieks and open arms. A hero’s homecoming, my existence is trumpeted and my feats abroad lauded.
This really occurred just once. At my old job. Pre-Senegalese adventurer, I was a pen salesgirl. A bad one at that. But, nevertheless, I was happy to find my old boss and favorite co-worker still obsessively adjusting the store’s displays when I stopped by last week.
-Emma!
-Yes!
-You’re back!
-Yes!
My favorite co-worker embraced me.
-How was it?
-Wonderful.
Always uneasy with this answer but unable to embellish it, I am quick to turn the tables.
-How’s school?
-Almost done.
My old boss sauntered over and clenched my hand.
-So good to see you again.
-And you.
Something changed in his dark eyes and I struggled to recognize it as I had previously deemed him incapable of possessing it: emotion.
-Your mother. She was a here. He said in his lilting Italian accent. She was a worried about you. Concern. It was concern.
Haha. I laughed. And the now reflexive answer:
-Yes. She and the rest of Cambridge have made that quite clear. I suppose I was too far away for comfort.
This exchange has become routine, understandable in some circumstances (neighbors, my mom’s close friends and co-workers), less understandable in others (the masseuse, the hairdresser, the florist, the managers at the restaurant I used to hostess at…admittedly a favorite restaurant of my mom’s), and then completely baffling, as was the case with those with whom I worked a job that gave me little to no pleasure.
Though I had initially been able to laugh off what I imagined to have been my mother’s response when asked about her wayward daughter—She gets sick all of the time! I’m really worried about her—I began to suspect that these encounters were perhaps not quite so lighthearted as I bid my retail cohorts farewell and noted their eerie smiles.
Had my mom, induced by maternal paranoia, gone on a Cambridge crusade of sorts to contact all my acquaintances past and present and warn them that The Dark Continent (I hate that expression!), would, in all likelihood, swallow me whole? Alien bacteria would ravage my body, the equatorial heat would slowly fry my body from the outside in, parasites would eventually outnumber tissue cells…the details were unimportant. I would be survived by both parents and if there was any interest in creating a pre-emptive support group to brace her for my imminent demise, she could be reached at this number.
For about a week, I did not confront the perpetrator. I just added a tick to my mental tally every time an acquaintance gaped at my existence. My robust, unscathed, smiling, laughing, breathing existence.
Then this past weekend, a visit to my grandma finally gave me occasion to address this misconception. When my grandma, for the fifth time in two hours, turned to me, touched my arm, and pronounced that she was just so glad to have me back in this country, in one piece, I gave her a half smile. Then turning to my mom, commented that, I really resent the notion that one drops dead upon entering Africa.
-Emma, you were really sick. I was worried.
-No more sick than any other first time visitor.
-You were very sick.
-No, not really.
-Yes.
-No.
-Look, all I know is that when you tell me that there is no place you would rather be than at home, in your bed watching Sex and the City, I get worried. You don’t say things like that. You were really sick.
I laughed. My mom looked hurt. Indeed, I remembered uttering those words.
My body, at 102 degrees Fahrenheit, had found no respite in the midday heat. My head had taken on the weight of the world. My mouth dry. My stomach empty and churning. I had made what felt like a trans-Saharan trek to the Shell Station to by some too-expensive Gatorade which I had promptly vomited. My bedroom was windowless, making me exceedingly hot. Body-racking chills had prevented sleep from coming easily if at all. I had been thoroughly miserable. And, for the first time in nineteen years, had felt pangs of longing, longing to be at home. I had fired off an email begging that my mom call me. And she did.
I had never even used the word homesick. But after deliriously murmuring something about wanting to be at home, I remember the silence at the other end of the line.
-Well, I guess going halfway around the World is what it takes for you to feel homesick.
-Homesick?
-You are homesick, Pumpkin.
-I think I’m just really sick.
A former camp counselor who had to expound my approach towards homesickness for concerned parents one too many times, I always detected, in most parents, hints that they actually hoped their beloved daughter would feel a tinge of homesickness.
But, up until this point, I had never given my poor parents any reason to believe that their beloved daughter had any homebody tendencies whatsoever. Sleepovers were always eagerly anticipated and I often attempted to extend my stay an extra night. At age ten, I went to sleep-away camp for the first time. When my mom picked me up at the end of my two-week stay, I cried all of the way home. And pouted, constantly on the brink of tears, until my parents said that I could go to camp for a full month the following year. But even month-long stays could not satiate me and I would always fall into a post-camp slump, crying bitterly and pouring over photographs for the week that followed my return.
My sophomore year of high school I became resolute that I should spend some portion if not all of my junior year “away.” I toyed with the idea of going to France for the entire year, but after deciding that I hated French, opted to spend my fall semester at a school in Vermont.
I enjoy a happy home life and my impulse towards “away” is not by any means driven by an aversion to home but, instead, an innate curiosity about what lies beyond home and all that is just so….familiar
Familiar. The word used to stick in my throat, often uttered with some profane prefix. The notion of the familiar, I feared, was destined to stagnate my being, drive me into an existence where I would amount to nothing more than a drone—overly secure, not living but mimicking actions long observed. However, I have come to cultivate an appreciation for the familiar.
Living in Senegal for four months was a constant barrage to my every sense, a maze work of challenges with no fixed point of start or finish. For those times when I needed to retreat into myself, I constructed small havens of familiarity—my room, the sunny roof, the boutique around the corner where the little boy behind the counter knew my name and penchant for sugar, often slipping me a few tinfoiled chocolates with whatever else I requested from the shelves.
At home, the regions of familiar are not pockets but vast plains. One may pass entire days, weeks, and (God forbid) months in seamless routine. Daily actions require little to no thought. The Times can be found in the box at the end of the street. But only mornings before it sells out. Oranges at the corner store. The 77 bus runs down Mass Ave. It is impolite to cut someone in line. It is polite to smile, make eye contact, and say thank you.
At home, one’s lexicon for living is not constantly being revisited and revised.
And, for finite periods of time, this can be reassuring.
family
