It’s a sticky feeling of dread. It’s embarrassing. I’m nine years old, old enough to spend the night with a friend, too old to be homesick.
We spent the length of this perfect July day at Totem Beach where Andrea and her family live in the summertime. You don’t want to waste these cloudless and sweetly warm days; there aren’t that many of them in the Pacific Northwest. Andrea and I ran, played, splashed in the water all afternoon long as the summer sun took its time, slipping down imperceptibly toward the horizon. The dazzling Pacific light pierced the waves and scattered itself in myriads of diamonds. Could this brilliance ever come to an end?
But it does, and it did. Evening shadows fell; dusk crept in quietly. The edges of the sky glowed apple green. It was time to go home.
“Would you like to spend the night, Rosalie?”
“Sure!” this would mean another day of summer fun.
As my mother drove away, it hit me. That empty, lost feeling in the pit of my stomach. Homesickness. I was trapped here for the night.
Something triggered Andrea’s mom’s motherly radar and she caught the signal. Her kind words pulled the longing out of me, and once I spoke it, I could bear it. After that, it was all good.
Homesick. What is this elusive longing that overpowers us in the twilight? How do we respond when a painting threatens to pull us all the way into the artist’s world? Why do we stifle tears at the sound of Bach’s “Prelude in C”? From where do these irresistible calls come? Which of us has not wished to tread the path of the moon on the lake, to dive headlong into the crimson glow of a sunset? What is this home country we search for all our lives? Who is calling us to our destiny?
