When I was 17 I traveled to Europe with my high school travel soccer team. We raised the funds and off we went to Denmark, Sweden, Finland and France. An incredible journey, far, far away from home. We played soccer in amazingly manicured stadiums, sporting red, white and blue warm up suits that said USA on the back, and made us feel like Olympians. We toured parts of the world we had only previously dreamt about, in big busses, like rock stars.
I was never so homesick in my entire life.
During one of the matches we played I slide tackled half of my shin skin off my lower leg. That thing stayed pretty pus-filled for the entirety of the trip. I vaguely remember word getting back to my mom about amputation. But seriously, she had no clue how bad or good it was, because back then, there was no internet, and no cell phones.
One night I collected all of the change I could muster and attempted to call her on a pay phone in the hall of the dorm we were staying in that night. I fed that thing coin after coin, dialed (on a rotary phone) the fifteen million digit number, and some kind of connection happened. Then a voice asking for more coins, which I pumped into the little slot furiously, desperate to hear my mom’s voice. “Hello?” I heard. “Mom?!” Then another voice, “Please deposit fifteen million more coins.” My heart sank. I had no more coins. The tears began to flow down my cheeks as I hung the receiver up on its perch and sniffed my way back to my room.
When I opened my red, white and blue striped duffle bag one night in the beginning of the trip, the one that matched my warm up suit, stuffed down deep, under my socks, was an envelope. That envelope had a whole bunch of little envelopes in it, one for each day of my trip, all addressed to me, in my mom’s beautiful cursive handwriting and her perfect little heart drawn next to my name. I felt something in my own heart soften and skip and I tore into that first envelope as fast as I could to read the first of many notes she had written for me. How did she know?
I think those notes saved me. They helped me feel connected even though I was an ocean away. They helped me know that the one person who loved me more than anyone else in the entire world, for the rest of my life, was loving me even when she couldn’t say it in person.
What are we sick for when we are home sick? Our family, our bed, our routine? Is it the familiarity of our home, or room, or belongings? Is it knowing we are looked after by mom and dad, or the safety we feel in their protective arms? Maybe a little of all of these. But today I know it to be the energy of deep, big love. When someone loves you so much that they ache when you ache, that they feel your joy and your pain, your sorrow and your triumph, that energy is unlike any other. When you live in it, maybe you just get so used to it that you don’t realize it is there until it is gone. I certainly had my coach and chaperones there to take care of me. I was safe and looked after. But that feeling was absent. I ached for it.
My daughter will go to sleep away camp for two weeks this weekend. She will only be a two hour drive away, not an ocean. As much as I am looking forward to the peaceful two weeks, the absence of the to do list she always has for me, and the consistent need for my physical body to be in her room to watch her sort her underwear, I already miss her. That big, deep love I have for her and my son, is the same my mom has for me. A connection more intense than any other in my life. An energy that we probably take for granted, until we are away from it for a bit, and we begin to feel the ache.
Today I sat behind closed doors, and secretly typed out the 14 notes for my daughter’s trip. I put them each in a little envelope with her name in my handwriting and a little hand drawn heart. I adorned them with stickers and filled the envelopes with extras she could share with her new friends. Before we drop her off on Sunday I will sneak out to the car and tuck them into her suitcase, under her socks, for her later discovery.
Thanks Mom. I am so grateful for your love.
