Homesick

“You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn’t really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.”

The reason that a film like Garden State (from which I have stolen this quote) does so well is because of the truth behind it–genuine feelings, no matter how contrived the situation chosen to put them across, will always prevail over high-tech special effects and sickly-sweet romance, in the end. When this is no longer true, cinema will be dead.

But enough of my personal views on movies, and back to the quote, which is ringing especially true for me now that “that idea of home is gone.” For those of you who have not been following me for the nearly-four years (wow) that I have been amassing this collection of random thoughts and recipes, this is the first time in seven years that I have lived in the same state as my parents, much less in their house–from Andover, MA to Toronto to Cannes to Paris to San Sebastian, I’ve finally made my way back to my childhood home in New York City… only to find myself thrust into a weird in-between stage.

It’s a place where it’s perfectly normal for my peers to be getting married and having babies, but no one throws a second glance my way when I say I’ve moved home. Of my graduating class, it’s hard to say what the majority of people are doing, what the status quo is. My “normal” was so far removed from everyone else’s for so long that coming back home, eating dinner at my kitchen table and seeing my parents every day is, for lack of a better word, weird.

For a long time, I used to get a feeling of intense, random panic that felt like homesickness, although it wasn’t really attached to a place, but more a time–a time on Long Island when summer days lasted forever and we were all thrown together into our huge house by the sea.

It’s been weeks since I was out there–these pictures are from a random trek to the beach when the sun still started setting at 4, and the last thing I was thinking of was plunging head-first into the waves–and yet when I think of home, that’s where my mind goes: not to the couch I’m sleeping on, or to the fact that now that I’m back “home.” Instead, I can’t get over the feeling that I’m in everyone else’s way. All this time of revolting against the idea, the open invitation, “why don’t you just move home?” and now is when I learn that the open invitation wasn’t quite so open… that the ideal of me living at home is something that, like my dreams of home on Long Island, is caught in a time that has long-since passed.

The dream’s been shattered for all of us, as they realize that me moving home means that I’ll actually be around all the time, and I realize that moving back to a place where my room has long-since been converted into a room for my little sister involves a new sort of nomadic life, a series of days filled with carting my “stuff” around the apartment, trying to find a new home for the few things I allowed to follow me “home” from my old life: a pile of papers constituting my manuscript and my bank statements, a couple of pairs of shoes that don’t fit into the closet that I finally won the fight to own, the blanket that I sleep under on the couch in the den.

I guess what’s strange is the fact that, for so long, I found myself trying to nest and build a home around me in the life that I had chosen. Even if my apartment in Paris or the room I rented in San Sebastian never felt quite like home, it was mine. I would move into whatever new space I had chosen to inhabit, stack my books on the shelves just so, move the furniture until it made sense to the way I lived my life: a chair by the window, coffee mugs lined up on the counter, wine glasses low where I could reach them. And even as I did this, created these spaces that were “homey,” it was always home, that place you can apparently never go back to, that was on my mind.

I know it’s not a new feeling, if only because of the sheer number of quotes published by someone much wiser than I that discuss it. But I’ve finally realized upon moving “home” after all these years, that this is it: everything I own is here, shoved into this closet or under my brother’s bed… there’s no where else to go, no plane ticket to hold in the back of my mind as an end date, no empty apartment waiting for me or boxes holding my things until I get back. There’s no back to go to.

So why do I still feel homesick?

Spaghetti with Crab
6 oz. spaghetti
1 bay leaf
1 can lump crab
1 tsp. peri-peri sauce (or other hot sauce)
1/4 tsp. freshly crushed black pepper
salt to taste

Prepare salted boiling water for the spaghetti, and add a bay leaf. Cook the spaghetti until al dente and drain, reserving a half-cup of pasta water.

Toss the pasta with the crab and the peri-peri sauce. Add pasta water as needed to add moisture. Toss with black pepper and salt, and pretend that things are always as they were, and you’re eating fresh seafood barefoot by the bay.