Homesick
I’m rarely, if ever, homesick. Actually, I can only think of one time that I’ve ached for home. It was two and a half months into my freshman year of college. The occasion was Thanksgiving break, but I wasn’t going home for it. And so I was looking through photos on my phone, and I was really missing my family.
But after that one time, I never felt it again. Despite sometimes going six months at school without being at home, I was never homesick. And I think that was partly because I knew they would be there when I came back. Basically every time I came home for a school break, I felt like I fit right back into the household. I had my old bed, and my old room, and my old chores. So during those times when I was away from home for a long time, I didn’t have to be homesick, because I wasn’t losing anything when I was away.
But today I felt a little pang of homesickness. I’m currently on a plane headed from Arizona to Oregon to visit my alma mater and my old classmates. And as the plane taxied down the runway, I realized that soon I will be leaving home for good. I don’t want to live in my parents’ house forever, and so I told them that I would move out within a year of finishing college. And now that year is fast approaching completion. I have about six more months to enjoy my family’s presence, and then I’ll need to set off in the world on my own. And this time, I won’t be able to come back after the school term is over. Sure, I’ll probably be able to visit my family regularly. But my parents’ house won’t be home anymore. I won’t have my own room there or my own bed. Once I move out, my home will have to be whatever I make it to be.
I don’t know why the sight of the barren rocks of Arizona next to the Phoenix runway got me thinking these thoughts. But somehow I ended up homesick for a place I haven’t even lost yet—just a place I’m going to lose soon.
-Jakobus