a feeling of longing

Last night, I was watching Survivor, as I always do on Wednesday evening (addicted, I admit it!), when I checked facebook (another frequent occurence). I find it somewhat difficult to keep up with people sometimes, as the "feed" on facebook seems to operate in such a strange way. Random people that I should probably delete from facebook are always popping up, but then two weeks will go by and I don't see a peep from my sister, but then going to her page, I'll see all sorts of things that I somehow missed.

I saw a status update from a good friend's mother (and good family friend as well) and saw that my mother commented, and I noticed at first because she wrote "lexi" in her note. I clicked on her page, and saw a list of, quite literally, about 75 replies, all coming from my mother, my sister and her two daughters, who are very close friends of my sister and I. D and my mother are good friends- D's two daughters, K and K, are each a year older than my sister and I, and all are close family friends, as I said. We all grew up together, spending holidays, birthdays and everything in between together. Some of my best memories involve these ladies. I can't remember what D's original status was, but somehow it turned into a conversation about the six of us all getting together for a weekend. D, K and K are all in my hometown, where my parents still live. My sister (B) is in Boston, and I am way down here, in Washington, DC.

Alone.

Not alone, but not that close to them and I was suddenly hit with an overwhelming sense of homesickness, so much that I spent the next hour trying to convince Steve that we should move to Boston (for reference, Boston is about an hour and a half from my hometown in NH).

Steve, not surprisingly, is not terribly on board with the idea.

For as much of me that wants to move closer to my family in NH, the same part of him wants to move closer to his family in Iowa. It really makes me sad sometimes, to know that my children will never be close to their grandparents the way I was growing up. Both sets of mine lived in my hometown and they were (are) a huge part of my life. This isn't something new, but something that I've struggled with for the entire time I've lived here in DC. Of course, I knew this moving here, but perhaps part of me didn't think I'd stay here as long as I have. Part of me thought I might move back after a few years. I just wish that I could easily hop in a car and drive home for a weekend, or even an afternoon.

Saudade, or saudades (plural), is a Portuguese language word difficult to translate adequately, which describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for something or someone that one was fond of and which is lost. It often carries a fatalist tone and a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might really never return.

(the painting shown above was on the wiki page...I really like the painting and wouldn't mind a copy of it....)

Where did you grow up and do you live nearby there now? What do you do when you are feeling homesick?