If you’ve never had that homesick feeling, it doesn’t mean you hate your home.
I think of it as more of a time than a location.
Not that we grow out those feelings, we just remember them differently the further we roam.
Do you remember that time?
These days I get homesick for others when they are on the road.
My wife, my kids with their kids, my other others.
Like a blessing of hope they make it home.
I take that personally.
I watched an old clip from the Ed Sullivan show with Elvis Presley.
It was 1956.
It was all Elvis, twisting out Hound Dog, the crowd screaming.
He addressed the audience at the start and at the end, when he said, “Friends, until we meet again, may God bless you as he’s blessed me.”
I got a homesick feeling the first time I heard it, which was last week.
I was two years old in 1956. What did Elvis make me homesick for?
My Dad was twenty-six, married four years with two kids.
My Mom was twenty-two, married four years with two kids.
Their first kid was born in a Navy hospital in Bremerton, the second in an Army hospital in San Francisco.
That’s how it was for an active duty Marine sergeant’s wife.
A room, a bed, no visitors, no support, just a doctor to check progress and a nurse to hurry things along.
Then he went to college and their third son was born in a regular hospital.
I was born in an institutional environment, my kids born at home, for a turnaround on modern times.
In the top image my Mom is congratulating my Dad on graduation day with their three little booger boys.
The First Time Away From Home
I spent a couple of weeks with my cousins in farm country with cows and electric fences.
One of them was my age, the other my older brother’s age.
They were good kids to their ‘city boy’ cousin from North Bend, the metropolis of the Oregon Coast.
I wasn’t alone, but there was something missing: familiarity.
I missed my bed, brothers, mom and dad. If we’d had a dog, I would have missed it, too.
It added up to feeling homesick, which I got over five minutes after getting back home.
But up until then, they were everything to me.
I’m the grabby one.
Eventually, being the grabby one found a sport with plenty of man-handling.
Later, it included a couple of other grabby characters.
The Good Homesick Feeling
Do your kids ever tell you they’re homesick, but can’t say why?
If you’re like me, you don’t give them time for it.
After they grew up and started making their way in the world, I told them, “You don’t have to move to the other side of the continent to avoid me. I can ignore you from across the street. Just ask the neighbors.”
We all live within a forty minute drive with good traffic on 205.
My wife likes to say, “They are your kids, not your friends.”
I tell her she can call them whatever she wants, and I’ll do the same.
They are in the prime time of life and showing it.
What do you do at a playground?
Play.
It’s been proven that the people who know how to play together, stay together.
When your kids find someone that special, you can breath easier.
Breath in, two, three, four. Breath out, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
What About Playful You?
If you have someone who knows how to play together, you’ve found the key to a happy life.
It’s not all play, but why not make the hard parts a little more fun?
For some, adding on year after year is a green flag to spend whatever youthfulness left on pursuit of youthful play, like Diego Rivera and his hat.
He’s on the right.
Rivera had four wives and numerous children, including at least one illegitimate daughter.
His first child and only son died at the age of two.
His third wife was fellow Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, with whom he had a volatile relationship that continued until her death.
His fourth and final wife was his agent.
Is it fun to get married four times? Playful?
Are volatile relationships fun, or playful?
My thought on multiple marriage is: Make up your mind, bro.
If you have a string of marriages to never married women, it’s probably not them. It’s you.
Numerous children with numerous women? No one wants to see your relationship work.
Now, I’m not recruiting, or bragging, or promoting, but one wife is enough. One kid is enough.
If you have one wife and one kid, and you do things together, spend time together, include your dear old moms and dads, then you are the asset your parents always said you were.
You can be anyone you want to be.
Maybe asset is the wrong word?
Get a piece of paper and draw a line down the center with ASSET on one side, and LIABILITY on the other.
Think of everyone you’ve ever known and write their name on one column or the other, and do it quietly.
Maybe liability is the wrong word, but you get the drift.
Remember, make your list with kindness.
About David Gillaspie
