Homesick
I feel it is important to inform you, that a lot of what I write is not my own. Not my words or my stories or my experiences or my feelings. I am just a mosaic of all the songs I have heard, the people I’ve met and the places I’ve been. “All my good lines are always stolen’’ – a quote that is itself taken from a book I read some time ago.
Just for you, I will attempt to write about an experience that has in fact been mine: Being on this ship has made me homesick – just not for my own home.
Don’t get me wrong, I miss my family and my dog and my bed and my people, but somehow that is different. That’s mine. I get to go back and have it all again. It will of course be different – so will I - but it will be home.
I have instead become homesick for homes I have never had. I miss the feeling of working a job in a theatre in Wisconsin, or hiking in Sweden. I nostalgically long for mornings in French cafes, cuddles with cats in Quebec or picnics on Austrian hills. I (unfortunately) have never done any of these things, but my crewmates have – therefore, by extension so have I.
They’ve shared their lives in pictures and stories and songs and smells. The Durban curry brought up conversations of swimming in Umhlanga, and the Hasselback potatoes prompted talks of Swedish traditions. Our emotions can overcome any language barriers – the inability to express an experience in words can be bypassed by conveying similar feelings.
I can feel the sunshine of a childhood in Brazil because I’ve felt the sunshine of Christmas holidays in Cape Town. It’s not the same experience, but the same feeling, and that is enough to understand. There is some beauty in sharing with others. To be loved is to be known. To feel understood, even if briefly and incompletely.
It can be a scary process, though. At the start, we hesitantly talked about where we come from and how Europa found her way to us. Now, even just a week in, people reminisce about crazy ex-roommates and their favourite birthday gifts – the type of silly but significant things that come out as they uncover the layers of their souls. We bring so many parts of ourselves along with us wherever we go.
I am not writing this story. It is my pen on the paper, but it is our collective experience. My best lines are sometimes stolen, but my best adventures are always shared. Together, we are building a collective home on Europa. One filled with tales of burnt toast, and catching tiny fish with big hooks. We decorate this home with laughter and good food and idealizations of warding off pirates. Strong foundations laid by the shanties we sing, the jokes we make and the places we go.
This home will also become one I will be homesick for. But it will be an altogether new and different homesickness – a type I can only truly share with my fellow sailors. One without a cure.
