Homesick for Home

I’ve been thinking a lot about home lately. Mainly because, for the past year and a half, I have been feeling homesick.

I’ve had a lot of homes in my life. In fact, I meant to begin this post by talking about how much I have recently realized I missed DC, my college home, how good it feels to be back. Cheshire, CT. Washington, DC. Waterford, Dublin, Cork, Ireland. Coogee, Australia. And now Williamstown, MA. All places I’ve called home.

I’ve never defined home as one specific, immovable, almost holy place. Perhaps because from the age of 18, arguably 12, the permanence of home was removed. I believed that home is many things. It is a feeling of safety, a moment in time, a person. And in many ways that’s true. But what I’ve realized recently is that while we may live in many places in our lives, for most of us, everything that we do, whether we know it or not, always comes back to a central core – your family.

I’ve realized this recently because recently that core was removed. I’ve lived my life without my mother, and her death rocked my six year old world and left a hole that will never be filled. But when my father died, the man who raised me, my entire world shifted. And every thought in that world had to, one by one, be adjusted. Because whether we know it or not, from the minute we are born our point of reference in the world is our parents. We take our cues from them, learn what is safe and what is not, what is good and what is not. Now, I’ve never had the closest relationship with my father, he wasn’t an easy man to have a close relationship with. I didn’t call him once a day or once a week (and sometimes not even once a month). But I have come to realize that the knowledge that he was there somewhere in this world, watching my life from the sidelines (and approving, I hope) was the solid foundation from which I could live my life. And now he is gone. And for the past year and a half I keep feeling homesick for something that I have to remind myself again and again is not there. Despite the fact that I have an amazing family watching my life from the sidelines, it is somehow not the same.

So now I am in search of a new home, a new central core. I guess this is part of life and that as you grow up, you build your own family and your own foundation. And I am well on my in that direction, married to my best friend and about to start the adventure of a lifetime.
As my cousin asked (and I am quoting from a facebook post, how sad) “how am I feeling homesick when I’m still at home?”

Because home is the people in our lives. Appreciate them.