Return of the Homesick Blues
February 9, 2006 at 6:06 Homesickness has been visiting in my house for a week or two now. It hadn’t dropped by since early November, and I wasn’t sure when it would once again darken my door. I think it slipped in the night E-Man carried in a big birthday care package from my Grrrl friends.
About ten of them gathered in the U.S. to celebrate my birthday a week ahead of time. They filmed the party, put together the package, and mailed it. In a miracle of international shipping, it arrived in time for me to enjoy at my birthday celebration at my home here in Belgium. Opening the box unleashed their love and good wishes—and called Homesickness back to the table.
Watching the video of Heather, Michelle, Joanna, Jan, Janis, Lisa, Stephanie, Beth, and Eileen made me long for my old neighborhood and the Grrrls’ Nights Out that we held in each others’ homes.
After seeing the Grrrls, I had to re-visit the Christmas card photos of the children that brought us all together. They are growing up, their round cheeks replaced by sculpted cheekbones, the neat white lines of baby teeth have been replaced by gap-toothed smiles. Some have filled out, some have trimmed down, hairstyles have changed, glasses appeared, and braces are on the horizon.
These are the babies we used to push in strollers through the shady streets of our neighborhood, the ones who needed help on the swings and someone to wait at the bottom of the slide, the ones who first entered the pool with swimmies on each arm and a reluctance to get their faces wet.
Now the playground swings and slides hold far less appeal, and in summer they spend their time in the pool treading water in the deep end, going off the diving board, and waiting for the life guard’s whistle. Even as we see our kids grow together and grow apart, the Grrrls have remained a unit.
In other parts of America, I have great-nieces and nephews that I have never seen (Madeline, Eric, Molly, Anthony, Kathryn) and others I haven’t seen in far too long (John, Meghan, Matthew, Stephen, and Alex). I hate that I’m missing the chance to connect to the next generation in my family, though admittedly, even when I lived in the States, we were separated by hundreds and hundreds of miles and rarely had a chance to visit.
Next month my niece Anne, a junior in high school and a talented musician, will be playing with an orchestra at New York City’s famous Carnegie Hall. She has an English horn solo during the William Tell Overture. How I wish I could be there to hear her play. Last summer she toured Europe playing oboe with another orchestra but never got close enough to Belgium for me to attend a performance.
Down in Florida, my mother-in-law lives with my sister-in-law’s family. Each year she spent a few weeks in our home, and it’s been more than a year since we saw her last. That’s such a long time. My children miss her, and we all are sad because though she is Belgian, she hasn’t visited Belgium in decades—and her health doesn’t allow her to visit us now.
E-Man is traveling to Virginia next month to pick up financial documents that are presently in storage but that we recently discovered we need to file our U.S. tax forms. He’ll be staying in our old home with the friends who are renting it now. While there he’ll tend to his beloved flower beds and prune the shrubs and trees, something our tenant, who has severe allergies, can’t do. And I’m sure he’ll crawl around in the attic to check the roof, slide under the house to make sure all’s well there, and attend to any maintenance issues before he flies down to Florida to see his mother. In a twist of fate, he’ll be flying back to Belgium on the first anniversary of the day we arrived here.
I so wish I could join him on this trip. I long to go home and retrace my steps, see our friends and family, bask in the sun shining through the windows of our house, get a bagel at my favorite coffee shop, go to the mall.
But my yearning to visit home is tinged with anxiety. How will it feel when I visit America? Will it make returning to Belgium difficult? Or will the thought of resuming our old life there seem less appealing?
We’re committed to staying here for three years but have the option of staying for five. The tug of war in our minds and hearts on when to leave is unrelenting. We discuss it nearly every day. We’re planted on two continents now with friends and family in both places, and somewhat complex career, financial, and educational issues to consider in whatever decision we make.
As I sit in Belgium this February entertaining Homesickness, I know we’re in the middle of a long-term relationship.
One gray day I’ll lean over my kitchen sink and gaze out the window in Virginia and let out a long sigh. “This reminds me of Belgium,” I’ll say. And then I’ll put on the kettle, join Homesickness at the table, and revisit the places and people I love.
© 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved.
Reader Comments (8)
Strangely enough, today I was talking to my mom on the phone about homesickness. Except that for us the place that we are homesick for doesn't exist anymore.
I grew up on a farm in Africa which just isn't there at all. Its almost as though there is a blank space on the memory wall where that place should be. I talked to my mom about how at least when you have lived somewhere you can usually go back and revisit, but for us there is no going back and there is nowhere to visit.
I am homesick more for people than places, but often a place seems intrinsically caught up in memory with the people who I want to be with.
My father, for example, is someone who I have no memories of other than in the farmhouse we lived in or doing something associated with it. My head knows that he lives somewhere else now and that everything has changed, but my heart remembers him sitting in his chair in the living room of our old house reading his newspapers.
When I talk to him on the phone I still see him standing in the hallway of our house talking on the old fashioned black telephone that was part of the party-line on the road to our house. Twelve other families shared the line and you could often hear the click-click as someone else picked up.
Even now I wait for him to start talking loudly about 'that old bird down the road' and then wait for her to hang up before continuing. I have no mental picture of where his telephone is in the house that he lives in now.
Homesickness is obviously a guest that makes one particularly contemplative! ;)
Thanks for letting me ramble!
Your iniative in blogging is the best thing that's happened to our far-flung family. So today, I'm sending you a Really Big Hug, with some sappy tears and sniffles included. *mwah*
Here's to visiting friends soon!
The upside is that you are in Belgium for only 3 to 5 years, almost sounds like a prison term :-D
I hope, however, you will find a way to drop in your old "home" and ease your homesickness blues before your tenure in Belgium is up.
Your post's last paragraph sums up the meaning of "homesickness". Anywhere we make fond memories our hearts yearn to re-visit.
You have a way of saying things, not related to an american in Brussels, but to all humans, male and female.
Why do I post a comment now? Maybe inspired by Mike on the Bottom and to confirm that heterosexual males read your blog :-). But maybe because thanks to you I start to understand my girlfriend better. She is an american from Washington working in Brussels.
It slowly dawns on me that she isn't 'home'. It's a very weird feeling to suddenly realise that something is there, although it already was there all the time...
I read an article about a professor who lets people watch a movie in which people pass the ball. During the excercise a guy dressed in a gorilla suit walks through the image. After the test the people are asked how many times the ball was passed and a second question is "did you see the monkey".
It's stunning to see how many people didn't see that monkey. It's the same here... I'm beginning to see that monkey and truth be told... I think I love her now even more...
Enjoy your further stay here and hopefully your memories and the knowledge your friends and family are only a phonecall away (an expensive one but none the less) will evict the nasty feeling of homesickness
Home is truly where your heart is and that is with your nuclear family who is with you in Belgium. I used to get so homesick before so it was really good that we did it because it laid all of that to rest.
As far as family goes, we moved from Utah to North Carolina, when we realized we did not see our families more than every couple of weeks and they lived anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes away. We work at sending letters, emails and making phone calls, but I don't see my family as much as I would like.
It is probably a small case of wistfulness and the extreme change in culture and environment. I believe you will look back and be so glad that you lived in Belgium and wish you could go back...