Homesick even though we’ve never spent longer at home

How could you possibly feel homesick when you’ve never in your life spent more time stuck at home?

If anything was bothering you, it should be cabin fever – and in a way it is too, because these two feelings aren’t remotely contradictory.

This sort of homesickness isn’t a longing for your own four walls under a roof; it’s feeling homesick for the old familiar ways.

Sometimes it’s just missing the simple things we used to take for granted – like a pint or two on a Friday night; a trip up to Terryland Park or Pearse Stadium or the Sportsground; coffee in town just because you bumped into someone by accident.

Other times it’s not even the absence of old familiar ways; I’ve walked past pubs I don’t even drink in and restaurants I’ve never eaten in, and I miss not being able to do things that, actually, I’d never done before.

For most people, it’s not about the big things, the grand gestures – it’s not about the foreign holidays or new cars.

It’s the little things, like not being able to go to Mass; missing weddings, baptisms and funerals. It’s lunch in town; a day trip for no good reason; an overnight for your anniversary.

It’s the kids grabbing breakfast as they’re getting ready for school and heading out the door like a whirlwind – only now they moved four steps, because school starts as soon as you clear the detritus off the breakfast table.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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