As
most of you know, New England got hit hard with a blizzard recently—my family
in the Boston area got almost 3 feet of snow.
And as I was watching the statuses on facebook flip between “thank god
I’m not in Mass” and “Travel Ban” “2 feet and still coming down” or “not
leaving the house for days!” all I could think about was how much I wanted to
be there. Crazy right? Why would you want to be in a blizzard when
you’re in a place where the sun is melting away the 2 inches that fell on your
car? But snow always makes me homesick.
I
actually wanted to feel that cold air on my skin and work myself warm again
shoveling snow, all to be rewarded with a creamy hot chocolate by the
fireplace. I want to make snow angels in
the front yard and sled down the hill in the back. Now, my parents’ back yard is overgrown with
trees and bushes, so there is no path down the hill, and we’re all “too old” to
make snow angels (not that that would stop any of us). But that won’t stop me from remembering.
I
remember a time not too many years ago when the electricity went out and we
made a fire and sat around playing board games by candlelight. I have a rare fortune of being close to my
family and I actually enjoy spending time with them, which, as I understand it,
is not the norm. And like most families,
we have our difference and we all need some time away… but sometimes I wonder
if maybe I went too far away.
After
moving to Virginia, I got to go home twice last year, once in July, for my
sister’s birthday, and once for thanksgiving.
My mom came to visit me a few times, but my sister and my dad only got
to come down once during the whole year.
Sure, we video chat and talk on the phone once or twice a week, but it’s
not the same as sitting next to each other and spending time with each
other. I didn’t realize how much I would
miss my family or my hometown.
Even
little things that wouldn’t normally bother me have started to make me
homesick. When my dad told me that they
were getting Chinese (from my favorite place) and my sister was going there to
watch “the game” (now infamously known as the deflate-gate game) with them, I
actually got jealous. Now if you know
me, you probably know that I have zero interest in sports. I never played sports, I never went to sports
events. I think I went to one football
game throughout my high school career—and none in college. Football has no interest to me. But the fact that my whole family was going
to be together enjoying Chinese food—without me! Well, that’s just not fair.
It’s
the little things that I miss the most; going to Disney movies with my sister
and and analyzing them on the drive home.
I miss watching late night TV with my dad as he falls asleep in his
recliner, waking himself up at the sound of his own snoring. I miss jumping up onto my mom’s bed while
she’s watching TV or playing on her computer.
I miss her showing me all the “cool stuff” her friends posted on
facebook… even though I saw it on my news feed 3 weeks earlier.
I
miss standing on chairs in the kitchen with brownie batter in hand, belting
along as The Foundations ask: “Why do you build me up buttercup baby…”
I
miss my dad my dad making a pun out of every-single-thing—and then when we
don’t laugh, repeating the joke again just in case we didn’t understand
it. We got it the first time… still not
funny the second time Dad.
I
miss my mom blurting out totally inappropriate comments in like “you creamed
yourself” in front of my friends when I dropped ice cream on my jeans’
zipper. And then after my friends
telling me how awesome my mom is.
I
miss spending hours on the couch playing scrabble and watching movies with my
sister, too lazy to get more cheese-itz, but not lazy enough to jump into
warrior mode the moment someone decides to change the channel.
I
miss my family. I miss those unexpected
moments that you never plan but quickly become stories you tell over and over
again until they are the details that make up your life. I miss the little things that make up my
family, and that make my family my home.
