It was a Tuesday, which is the worst day to be homesick because nothing is even wrong on a Tuesday.
I had a fine day. Fine coffee from the deli on 2nd Ave, fine emails, a fine walk home through the East Village. And then I was standing in my kitchen in Astoria eating cold rice out of the pot and I just started crying.
No reason. That's the thing about homesickness in NYC. It doesn't wait for a good reason. It ambushes you over cold rice.
So I called Ma. It was 9PM my time, which is her morning, and she picked up mid-chaos because she's always mid-chaos, and the first thing she said was not hello. It was: "You are eating properly?"
And I lied and said yes while looking at cold rice in a pot.
We didn't talk about anything important. She told me my cousin's wedding date got moved. She told me the neighbor's dog died. She told me the mango season was good this year and I would have loved the ones from the market, and my throat did that closing-up thing again because I wasn't there for mango season. Again.
That's the arithmetic of homesickness nobody warns you about. It's not the big things. It's the mango seasons you keep missing. The Tuesdays.
She couldn't fix anything. She's eight thousand miles away and she can't teleport a plate of proper dal into my Astoria kitchen. But somewhere around the part where she scolded me for not wearing socks in the apartment, I stopped crying.
That's the whole trick of a mother. She fixes nothing and everything at the same time.
We hung up after twenty minutes because she had to go somewhere. I stood in my kitchen feeling lighter and heavier at once. Then I actually cooked something. Made proper rice. Sat down like a person.
Homesickness in NYC never fully leaves. You just learn to call home before the cold rice stage.
Call your mother. That's it. That's the post.
Love,