Homesick Blues

I’ve been in Atlanta for 11 years now (almost to the day as I moved here Memorial Day weekend in 2000). And mostly, this feels like home. That’s the interesting thing that happens when we’re adults and no longer dependent on our parents; when the home you grew up in isn’t home anymore. Last year we toyed with the idea of many other places becoming our home—our hometowns made the cut (Cincinnati, Kansas City), as did NYC, LA, and Chicago. Even Richmond and Boulder were in the mix because of potential job opportunities.

But, that wasn’t where we were supposed to be. We’re clearly, for now, meant to be here, in Atlanta. Though that doesn’t make the missing any less rough. Lately I’ve been incredibly homesick, and I’m not certain what it is that I’m missing. My mom? My sisters and brother? My nieces, nephews, and grandmother? The unrealistic notion that my family isn’t scattered throughout the country?

My first Thanksgiving in Atlanta my twin sister visited and brought along her college roommate with her son who was about four at the time. My twin also invited her on-again-off-again high-school boyfriend and we cooked the turkey with the bagged innards still inside the bird (whoops), watched half of “Fight Club” just before bed and I had an epiphany in the middle of the night, woke my twin up and asked her to tell me the truth, “Is Tyler Durden real?” But that’s a whole other article. Anyway, apparently when they left, my twin’s college roommate’s son (ahem–this story is really a friend of a friend, plus a cousin, isn’t it?) said, “I miss everyone.” Meaning the chaos and all the fools (myself included) at that Thanksgiving in my teeny apartment.

And that’s where I am, as profound as a child, “I miss everyone.”