It’s been almost two months now since I got to Northport, and in that time I have not yet really gotten homesick. There have been a few isolated incidents, but no overwhelming feelings. I had another incident today. So I thought this would be a good time to review what is making me homesick.
The first time I felt homesick was early on. One day when I first got here, I walked into the local Wal Mart, that is set up exactly like the Wal Mart in Margate, and I suddenly realized that no matter how much I searched the candy aisles, I would not find my sister there.
Then, some time later, I was talking to my mom one day, and she told me that next Saturday she and Terry were going to visit Aunt Claire. Sigh. Homesickness. I wished I could be going with them.
One day, shortly after I started my new job, as I was driving into work I was musing on how much more sleep I was now able to get in the morning. Here, I am leaving the house at 7:30, whereas in South Florida, I sometimes had to leave the house as early as 6am, on the days when I would drive Joey into school. I began to miss….Joey. And those days. It was not a true “homesickness,” but rather “time-sickness,” missing an earlier stage in my life.
Likewise, whenever I see a tall, lanky boy about Joey’s age, I think of him and miss him. And whenever I drive by a bookstore, I miss Mary, and the times we would sit for hours in Border’s or Atlanta Bread, snacking and typing away at our computers on our NaNo’s and other fiction.
Now, today, here is what happened. In my office, there has been a non-functioning printer sitting beside my desk. I got permission to move it out and store it in a back room. As I began to prepare it for the move, I removed an extending tray, and suddenly realized that this printer is a HP Laserjet N5, the VERY SAME printer which I had for years in my office back at my job in Coconut Creek. So I looked at this printer, and for the first time, I missed my old job.
So, that’s about it. I wonder if these incidents of homesickness are going to get more frequent and pronounced as time goes on, or less? I’ve been so very busy these past seven or eight weeks, I haven’t had time to get homesick! But now as things are beginning to calm down, as I settle into my new routine, I wonder how much I’ll miss the old routine.
