Those homesick blues

“She’s homesick,” they said, as they handed me their cell phone. “Would you pray for her?”

Listening to the sniffles through the phone, I could identify with her, one of our church’s recent graduates, in her first week at college.

It’s not a matter of immaturity. Indeed, the young lady is, in my opinion, one of the most stable, steady, and level-headed young people I know.

Homesickness happens to kids at camp, young people at college, adults who move away with their children, and to senior adults who transition from their home of many years to retirement centers. And I might add, homesickness happens to parents whose children leave home.

It is, I believe, a form of grief prompted by feelings of loss, not necessarily the absence of a physical place, that is a house, but separation from the familiar expressions of love associated with that place and by extension, the environment surrounding it, the community---or what sociologists refer to as gemeinshaft--- that makes home, “home.” It’s the roles, values, beliefs, and even routines we associate with home and around which we orientate our lives.

That life is disrupted by its absence, resulting in feelings of loss: denial, anxiety, dread, and a fixation on the loss itself---in this case, home.

Sometimes a gentle nudge from a parent or mentor is all that’s needed for a young fledging to fly from home. Sometimes more firm action is necessary.

I have a friend who called his mother in his first year of college and told her he wanted to come home. She immediately left, arriving at his dorm a couple of hours later. He threw his bags in the back seat, thinking, “This is easy; I’m on my way home.”

“Oh, no,” his mom said. “We’re not leaving; I just came to tell you why you’re going to stay.”

After her pep talk, he did stay and four years later, graduated, after which he embarked on a long and successful career as an educator.

Another friend of mine had a daughter who was ready to come home from college. She was on a basketball scholarship, and athletic life was more challenging than she had anticipated. One athlete in particular was giving her a difficult time on the basketball court.

“I stopped my work, sat down, and took an hour to write her a long letter, explaining why she needed to stay,” my friend said. “I closed by telling her that if she would quit spinning with the basketball, that girl wouldn’t be able to ‘pick her pocket,’ like she had been doing.”

It worked; his daughter graduated and has enjoyed a good life in two careers.

As I listened to the muffled cries of the young lady away at college, my mind flipped back to a time when I with my parents in Waco, Texas, shopping for basic dorm room necessities. I was already missing home, and in particular, my girlfriend, (now Lori, my wife) who was still in high school. The word “missing” doesn’t adequately describe that gut wrenching feeling of aloneness, sadness, even dread of the future that blanketed me like early morning fog.

I recall overhearing Dad muttering to Mom, “He’ll never make it; we’ll be back to get him in two weeks.”

At first I took that little comment as an out: “Only two weeks, and I can come home.” But the thought of quitting college before I ever really started, ignited a fire within me. In an instant, I determined that I would make it, I would stay, and although I experienced many lonely moments in room 125, Martin Hall, South 5th Street, Baylor University, my dad’s comment unintentionally pushed me into staying.

Or were they unintentional, after all?

I’ll never know; now Dad doesn’t remember.

And it doesn’t matter.

For either way, it worked.

To be sure: staying in college is not right for everyone. There are times when it’s well and good to come home, and I know well-adjusted, successful adults for whom college just wasn’t the right place to be.

But whether a person stays or not, leaving home is a process in which we make our own home, because there comes a time in life when “home” is not what it used to be and never can be again.

I recall hanging around and hanging around one Sunday afternoon when I was home from Baylor. Lori kept trying to hide her tears, but I would notice it. Then I’d have to fight back tears myself, so I’d stay another thirty minutes and then another. It was dragging into hours.

Finally, my grandad pulled me aside and said, “Son, just leave.”

There comes a time, whether you go to college or move across the street, when you just have to leave, when you have to grow up, when, as Thomas Wolfe wrote, You Can’t Go Home Again.