Perhaps it was the finality of it which brought on my sharp stab of homesickness today. Or perhaps it's that a new year is beginning, and moving into the future requires leaving something else behind. I'd been homesick before, but I wasn't prepared for the loss of a certain kind of closeness that comes when you live in the same towns, frequent the same restaurants and stores, and know the same people as your friends. Being in a person's home and just sipping tea or watching TV is a superb way of getting to know who they are, and what life is like for them. This level of closeness feels lost, particularly with my parents. I can't just pop over anymore. And that's really tough.
There's another level, too - that even if I were to move back home someday, it wouldn't be the same as what I left behind. When you live somewhere continuously, sure, everyone changes, but it's slow and you almost don't notice it. But when you leave and ocme back - as I've already done - the return is never quite what you expected. Businesses have closed, new ones have opened (Kent, I'm talkin' to you), people have moved on or started new phases of their lives, like having kids or going back to school. The "scene" you miss isn't the same scene, and there's no way of catching up, because, well, you weren't there. So there's really no going back, and no place to be except the present.
Also, I've changed. I think about my aunt, who moved to Colorado with her husband, lived there for 15 years, and then moved to Los Angeles. She keeps in touch with the family, but the fact is that her life is kind of a mystery to us. She belongs to another world, and now, so do I.
Sean has always told me that I'm a "country girl" at heart. I chuckle at that, since it's based on his rosy view of Ohio as the "country." But in fact, I'm from Northeast Ohio, which is kind of better: I'm from world-class schools, post-industrial economic rebirth, corn on the cob, and the Burning River. A corner of Ohio that's just as sophisticated as it is relaxing. And I love that. So I don't mind Sean calling me a country girl - he's never forgotten that I came from Ohio, and maybe that will help me remember who I am.
Isn't there some kind of saying - "you can't take the country out of a country girl...?" Yeah... that seems true. When you're getting used to something, it can seem to consume your entire identity, but there comes a point when you remember who you were before. I may be a Toronto girl now - knowing how to find the best food, the best museums, how to ride the subway without losing my balance - but I'll always be a girl who shopped at Beckwiths Orchard and hopped around sandstone cliffs at Kendall Ledges. I'll always know how to shuck corn into a paper bag, how to find a great sweater at the VD, and how to smalltalk with the folks back home. And I can count on them welcoming me back, and doing what they can to make me feel at home. I think I can count on that.
Sometimes when I feel homesick I go to my suitcase and get out the little stash of American money I keep, leftover from the last trip. It's the pennies that get me - we don't have pennies here, so when I hold a penny, it's like a piece of America in my hand. Of course, holding American money also makes me think about our national debt, our problems with consumerism and all the stuff that makes me ambivalent about being American - but damn, I miss the States. Not because I think it's the greatest country in the world (though it is great, in many ways), but because it's my home. In a way my American money is like the past, as it's really only a symbol for something else. You can't eat money, and you can never return to the past. I can only try to be in the present, and realize that the legs that climbed on redwoods and waded in Blue Hen Falls, are the same legs that can ride the TTC subway without stumbling. I've been shaped and molded by so many places, so many relationships, and yet, I'm still myself.
Being apart from my family is sometimes like having a limb cut off. Sorry to be gross, but they're part of me, because throughout my life, they shaped and molded me like clay. As teenagers, we resent our families for that - but if you wants to get over that, I'd suggest moving away. Move to a place where you can't come home, and then repeat that, until you realize - wow, they're not trying to mold me - it just happens. And it's time that I choose to mold my own life - to choose who I am, what I do, who I hang out with, and above all, what is home. Being away from them, I realize how lucky I am to have the option to come home - to come home for fresh corn, leaf-raking, coffee on the porch - for what keeps me feeling like me, as I move into this new country, into the present.
