I didn’t post this photo of Cape Cod to be maudlin or sentimental. I’m just missing it so much today. Buck doesn’t miss the Cape (or Massachusetts) at all, he never has the least bit of interest in hearing or thinking about it. I’m not putting him down for it, that’s just the way he feels and we’re all entitled to our feelings. But my feelings are that I’m really homesick for my kids and the familiarity of everything I know. And I wish I was around all the happy Celtics fans right now, and that I could get the Sox games on TV.
It’s true that the Cape traffic has become a nightmare, the cost of living is out of control, and even the back roads are filling up with houses. But I can’t get it out of my mind. I even miss complaining about all the stuff I just mentioned. The cruelest trick of the mind is that every once in awhile here in El Paso I think I can smell ocean air on the breeze, and it’s like a stab to the heart.
This is our fourth summer here. Will I ever stop feeling like this?
Awww, that is sad. Your kids are still out this way though? Good excuse to come visit and smell those smells for real! And you can visit Joan and I’ll come crash your party too! 🙂
I know I would miss that ocean smell and the breeze and just knowing how easy it would be to go sit on that beach. To me, there is something spiritual about sitting on the beach, staring out across all that expanse of water, and knowing there is something bigger than you.
Any way you can afford to go back for a visit?
@ Teeni – Oops, I just saw this after I answered Little Miss. I don’t really want to go home for just a visit, which I’ll explain below. But you’re sweet to suggest it, and when I do go back I’ll be sure and let you know so we can get together. 🙂
@ Little Miss – I could go back for a visit but I don’t want to. I never have anywhere to stay. I end up on someone’s couch, or in a motel, or just flat out alone because everyone’s at work. Hanging around alone only works if you live at a place; doing it while visiting is a real bummer. My daughter and her fiance will be here Saturday for a week, so that will be nice. But I wish she and I lived near each other so we could go shopping whenever we wanted, or watch a movie, or just sit and do nothing together. And I wish I could hang around with my boys more, too.
I know part of my trouble is empty nest, and the other part is that there are just no familiar things to rely on here … like dinners with longtime friends, coffee with the girls, reading local papers and knowing all the names, family cookouts, trees, lawns, the beach, etc.
I can easily imagine how hard that must be, Wendy. I would feel lost without my daughters – one reason why I stay up here in this soggy wetland called Seattle. And hanging out alone in a vacation spot – even if it is your old stomping grounds – sucks. Another reason why I’ve never traveled alone. I’m glad your daughter is coming to visit. That will be so nice for you. How about you and she go shopping for a sewing machine? 😛
Don’t know if this helps or hurts but:
http://www.summerhome.com/baycam/index2.htm
@ Little Miss – Yeah, I like hanging around with my sons but with my daughter it’s different, of course. And she loves hanging out with me too, as opposed to young men, who don’t want to hang around with their mom every day. Your idea about shopping for a sewing machine is a good one. She can sew, she’s a quilter (though she hasn’t had time to make anything in a couple of years), so she knows sewing machines much better than I do.
@ Bound and Gags – Thank you! When I want to remind myself of the traffic I watch the bridge cams, too. Mostly I watch this Chicken Cam from out on the Vineyard. I like it when the goats come up to the camera.
>>Will I ever stop feeling like this?<<
probably not quite, it may lessen some eventually. I get homesick sometimes, too. And it’s not just the places but the people, of course. But, I’ve found that moving back home doesn’t quite recapture it either. We tried that and wow was it different than we expected! Such homesickness can be for pieces of time gone. In the paraphrased words of Dr. Suess ‘don’t be sad it’s over, be glad it happened.’ Sort of, maybe. sigh… (I also responded to this post on your latest comment to my post.)
@ Curious C – You’re right, a lot of it is homesickness for a period of time/life that is gone by. That’s why if we could move back I wouldn’t be looking for a place on the Cape, I’d just like to be anywhere in MA or RI (I’d probably even settle for NH). I know I can’t recapture what’s gone by, I just want the familiarity of it. And I don’t want to stand out like I don’t know the rules. Texas is a whole other world anyway, but El Paso is reallyl a foreign country. sigh.
I watch the chicken cam too. I almost feel guilty for being here and not having you here. I’ll just complain about the place. The traffic sucks. The tourists drive like maniacs. All I do is swear at them. The 17 year cicadas are killing themselves on my car. We have hawks nesting on the street and they are murdering all the little birds at both my feeder and Barbara’s. Barbara’ misses you and of course so do I. Oh, and no one speaks English anymore. Oh and gas is $4.20 a gallon so I don’t drive into town much anymore. I hope you do come to visit at some point. I’ll kick the wasband out and you can stay at my house. I’m home all day and so is Barbara. We can drive around and have all bloggers in the area come down for a cook out.
Everytime I get homesick I watch this video:
hmm try this:
@ Joan – That chicken cam is really fun. When I leave it on in the background it makes my dogs ears’ twitch to hear the chickens clucking. Yeah, I miss you guys too. Hopefully we’ll be back, eventually. In the meantime I’ve got to try and get over this. I’m thinking of getting a puppy.
@ Dragonfly – Aimee, I LOVED that video. I think I’ll post it tomorrow with a photo of Buck riding his bike over the bridge (to avoid traffic). It ran in the newspaper. Thanks for the link! 🙂
You never miss it till it’s gone. I couldn’t wait to get out of Arizona. Boy was I surprised when I found myself being homesick and missing all the people I couldn’t wait to get away from. 😐
Oh, I see. Curious C has some really good points and I think a lot of that feeling really probably does have to do with “pieces of time gone.” Oooh – now I’m feeling maudlin.
How did you end up so far from here anyhow? Oh, and I’m home all day too so I’m definitely at that party (unless gas continues to rise in which case I’ll probably start bagging groceries somewhere – somewhere close to home because we won ‘t be able to afford the gas!!).
@ Peter P. – Exactly! You don’t realize you’ll miss all the crap you complain about until it’s gone.
@ teeni – We ended up here because Buck got a job as the editor of a magazine based out of here. But it’s an international magazine and the whole staff works from home, all across the country. So as the years go by it’s becoming obvious we could do this from anywhere. (I work for the mag too.) We love our house, I just wish it was in MA or RI where our kids and family and friends are. 🙂
A lot of those old photos I posted of Portland OR give me a similar longing for a familiar place, but the longing is for more than the place, it’s also for a time. I feel it also when I drive to visit my BFF in CT, which is where I was raised but feel NO desire to go back to. Even though CT repels me now, I still want to drive through those old neighborhoods on my way back home to NH, where I’ve been for 30 years.
It’s cool how the old friends are trying to help by reminding you of what you’re NOT missing.
@ David – It is cool when they remind me of the crap. It actually does make me feel a little better. But being so far from my kids just sucks. My daughter, who’ll be here Saturday, I haven’t seen since last September. I hate that.
I do long for a place in time, which is the whole empty nest thing, but I also long for scenery that is not the Southwest. It’s not something I can cure by just visiting, but I want to wake up every morning to a green world. I miss that. You posted really awesome green on your latest post and it truly was such a relief to see it all. I just wanted to run across your lawn and hug a tree. Of course, I’d have to be really-really careful not to fall into that shit hole. (I’m glad you took the cover off yourself because, you know, they charge extra for that.)
It might not smell so nice when it reaches you, but I could bottle you some Gulf ocean and shipped it to ya.
I feel for you. When we lived in the Mohave Desert I begged to live somewhere, anywhere that was green. Be careful what you wish for. You could end up in Houston. 😉
We’re lucky that our daughter has stayed nearby. I hope that continues after she’s married and starts having the babies. The empty nest didn’t bother us so much I guess since the kid was never terribly far away. Except for went she went to Kenya for a semester abroad, back in 2002.
Jeez, Wendy, that’s my septic tank you’re talking about, not a mere “shit hole”. (You’re right, minimum $65 extra if they have to dig up the covers!) And believe me, we’ve got many years of experience with REAL shit holes, a.k.a. “outhouses”. Yup. I dug the hole myself. Then dug the new one nearby, and dragged the outhouse over the new hole with the come-along. Now THAT is technology!
It’s nice to hear that the green photos help you. As summer begins I’ll be posting more pix of all the blossoms that grab my eye. Why just this evening I spied a patch of daisies …
@ David – Why did you have an outhouse?! Were you a hippie? You’re too young to have been a hippie…what the hell was going on? Explain your outhouse.
And do keep the photos coming. 🙂
Thanks Wendy. You’re right, we were too young to be real hippies. But we carried that same torch. We were post hippies. We lived in the woods with no electricity or running water for many years. Subsistence farmers with chickens, sheep, rabbits, and horses. Burned lots of cordwood in the winter. Then we moved to a place with electricity, so after a few years there we finally got the running water, but we used outhouses for at least all of the 80s. It made our city visitors rather uncomfortable, but gave them something meaningful to complain about.
I’ve just now decided to try responding inside the comment, ala you. This alternative lifeystyle you lived is pretty fascinating and I’m actually interested in it, which is a shock to me. I get really sick and tired of technology, electric bills, and all that goes along with that crap. I’d have a HUGE problem slaughtering animals, however, so I’d have to become a vegetarian, but I’m rather close to doing that now anyway. Have you been following A Year Without Toilet Paper: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/22/garden/22impact.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&oref=slogin ?