The other evening we were talking about our favorite childhood book/s. Mine was The Boxcar Children. It is a story about four orphaned siblings who must find a way to fend for themselves or risk being separated.The children have a grandfather they have never met, but they are afraid he is mean because he did not seem to like their mother. An abandoned boxcar, near a stream, is luxury compared to sleeping inside a hay stack all day! Working odd-jobs, the children use hard work to cultivate self-reliance until they must seek medical care for Violet, at risk of losing their independence.
After much process and some candid conversation with my dharma sister physician friend, Stacey decided to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine while she was here. It was convenient. She, admittedly, still had some reservations.
As she was waiting for her shot she said, “The first person who thanks me for getting the shot is going to piss me off.”
“Then let me be the first so you get it out of the way. Thank you.” We both cried and hugged.
When she sat down to go over the paperwork, I said to the woman, “She is doing this for her mother.”
The woman glanced at me, “Are you her mother?” When I said I was, she turned back to Stacey and confessed, “I did it for my dad.”
I am not exactly sure why Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny were so memorable, or why I can still FEEL the safety of their boxcar. The relief they expressed upon discovery of a safe place to call home was familiar to me as a child. Having grown up with an alcoholic father, I know that feeling of longing for a home in the core of my being.
Although I loved to go visit friends, overnights often turned into feelings of homesickness. I sometimes feel that even as an adult.
One website addressed “cosmic” and “Lemurian” homesickness: Sometimes you feel trapped in your life, in your body, separated by your skin from the truth of the world and the people around you. Lonely and disconnected. You gaze skyward, knowing home must be up there, somewhere. You long for the feeling of your soul’s most familiar surroundings.
Yes, that is the longing I had during the time Covid (and politics, and religion….) created the feeling of homesickness.
Wynn, from Brentwood Bay, British Columbia, in Grade 5, wrote about home so clearly.
Home means an enjoyable, happy place where you can live, laugh and learn. It’s somewhere where you are loved, respected, and cared for. When you look at it from the outside, home is just a house. A building. Maybe a yard. But on the inside, it’s a lot more than wood and bricks. The saying “Home is where the heart is” says it all.
Home is also where your memories lie. Home is where I got my head stuck under the couch. Home is where I fell in the goldfish pond. I remember sleeping in the playhouse, falling down the stairs and climbing up the apple tree. Without memories, most people wouldn’t be the people that they are today.
Just like memories, home is also where your hopes and dreams are.
