For those of you who don't know...

there is a tiny part in my brain that is actually retarded. It's a kind of social/creative/smart part, that is easily flummoxed and connected to all kinds of other parts of my brain that want nothing to do with this outcast clump of cells. Why do I bring this up now?

It's late. What better reason? I'm up with a cough that only gets worse with cough syrup. I've been sick for over a month, and I have no filters in my brain right now. (Okay maybe some, but most are trying to sleep).

So tonight, I take advantage of our new phone scheme that lets me call Australia for free. So I talk to my mum, and hear about my family. They all got together last weekend for the 1st Birthday of my niece, whom I've never met. Tonight they're going out to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday, and I won't be there to give her my present. I hear my father's voice and realize he isn't as young as when I left. Will I be surprised when I see he's aged? My mum talked to me about places that had changed, and some that hadn't, and how excited she is for me to be able to see all my old haunts. And I think about how my children are going to see those places I knew as a child and I feel suddenly old. She tells me about my grandparents being sick, and how she skipped church to try and minister to them this last weekend. About my sister's job grief and how badly she's been treated - oh and I got an email from her that just about made me want to cry I felt so bad. My poor sister whom I couldn't comfort. And then there's the fact that our dog, Connie, won't be there when I go because, as we suspected, she died while I was gone.
Then I talked to a friend of mine in Australia, because I wanted to give her our new phone number, and we talked a little while, maybe 30 minutes, before she had to go... because she has a lovely boy and her family needed her. And hearing how she's in this mum's group with girls who we used to go to high-school with - and I thought to myself how if I'd stayed, how I'd probably be in that group.

(What is it with these 'if's?)

But no I wouldn't because God put me HERE. In this place, in this time. HERE. And so I started feeling weird and homesick. R said, "What is homesick anyway?"
And you know what? I don't know anymore! You know why? Because THIS is my home. My family, my home. This is it.
So what is this undefinable feeling then? This longing for something that isn't mine, that might have once been, that is part of me but not anymore. I fear going home now, because I know it won't be the same, and the strangeness of it will make me want to flee back here, which apparently is home enough now. R says, "Why can't you just enjoy it for what it is?" And all I could think to say is, "What is it?"
All I know is I'll have that strange feeling of familiarity and strangeness, and me feeling like a stranger in it, like I don't belong anywhere anymore.
I think it was because my friend has a beautiful voice that conveys the accent so strongly that I can feel it coming back to me as I talk to her, and by the time I get off the phone I feel more Australian. But there was so much I wanted to ask her, so much I wanted to know, and the giddying effect on me was so delerious that I didn't want to let her go, and I think I made the whole thing more of a mess than it needed to be because I was feeling all woozy and "homesickwhateverthatis" and I realized how lonely I am for things of my own culture - as much as I've tried to assimilate and get over the embarrassment I felt about my own culture - I'm so lonesome for it. And just thinking about what a giant idiot I've been about it - the culture stuff, the homesickness, the desperate way I tried to keep my friend on the phone, the way I nearly cried when I found out I'd missed not only Beirut's show but also their Amoeba in-store appearance (see how retarded this is getting) well I just wanted to crawl into a ball of mess and cough myself to sleep.