How To Deal with that Homesick Feeling/Vancouver/Our Four Suitcases

How to Deal with that Homesick Feeling

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Every once in a while it hits me that I have not been home in over seven years. We have been on the road now a long time. We've been moving from province to province, driven by our desire to see more, experience more and absorb as much of the local flavor as we can before deciding it is time to set up house in a new location.

We are often so busy that there is just no time to reminisce about where we both grew up and where we raised our children until they were in high school. In quieter moments, I realize that I have not seen my mom more than once in that time period. I have not driven by any of our after school haunts or walked through the park where we first kissed. I have not visited our favorite burger joint or run into the multitude of people that we saw almost daily from our youth.

Time, unfortunately, stands still for no one and no place. I have read online accounts of how the old neighborhood's gorgeous old trees were devastated by ice storms and how the crime rate has risen to insane levels, affecting people that I know. Friends recant tales of their happiness and of weddings, baby showers and life changing events to which I can only listen.

I have not seen any of those friends and can only view the changes in their lives via social media and occasionally through hours long phone calls to catch up.

In our quest for change, did we lose something? Yes, we did, We lost some memories but we gained so many different kinds of memories along the way. We made more friends to stay in touch with and we have enjoyed experiencing the sites and the cities where we lived.

We have expanded the life experiences that our daughters would not have had if we had stayed in our hometown.

It has been difficult for the girls to leave behind friends that they have made in each city but we have seen recently that those friends are more than willing to travel to be together and are making plans to get together in other locations. Perhaps we have given our daughters a taste for adventure and they will continue to pursue travel.

I suppose I will get the chance to feel the same as my mother when my daughters start to roam far from home.

It is completely true that home is where your heart is because part of my heart will always be where that first kiss happened and where our daughters were first placed in my arms.

Home is where you grow up, where your memories first begin and where you leave a few pieces of your heart.

Travelling with Rob and the kids has been a fantastic adventure but tonight I am wishing that I could be on that 4,000 mile drive back home even if it is to sit outside on the picnic benches, at our favorite burger joint, eating a burger while listening to my mom catch me up on the latest family news.

How do you deal with being homesick when you are far from home?

What do you do when the phone calls and the text messages are just not enough?

Do you book a ticket and fly home for a bit? I'd do that at the drop of a hat but our situation does not allow for me to be away on my own. I'd need two tickets, minimum, and that is not in the budget.

Here is what I do when I start missing home and just cannot enjoy being "on the road"

1) I make the long distance calls to family and friends and talk as long as we can stay on the phone.

2) I pull out and hold close the special family heirlooms that I have kept

3) I look at all the old pictures and yearbooks

4) I watch old movies that remind me of people

5) We take walks and talk about old times

6) We wait for special times in the day when there is just something, perhaps the dampness in the air, that reminds us of the smell of home

7) We'll go for burgers and complain non-stop the whole time about how lousy they are compared to the ones from home

8) I will just go lay down and have a good old-fashioned cry for my mommy

9) (Don't laugh) I'll pull out jewelry from my grandmother and smell it because it has her perfume scent on it...that's usually when I go have a good cry

10) I'll remember that there was a reason we decided to travel in the first place. I was bored with growing up and living most of my life in the same place, seeing the same people, doing the same things, day after day after day

...and that's when I can smile again and swallow that homesick feeling and look at all the new "second hand" furniture and household items in our temporary home in our temporary city and realize that we are the luckiest family because we are living our dream of travel.

...and then I will read this article to Rob and he will say, "we'll just keep making new memories, Tracy, and we won't have time for old ones." I love him. Maybe, home really is wherever you bring your heart.