Tomorrow, I will fly back to New York. On Tuesday, spring semester will begin. The holidays have passed, break has (nearly) ended, and the daily rhythm of life returns. Like all school breaks, this one felt too short, too fleeting.
I feel a little as if I am on a moving train, one that stops at each station but not long enough. I’m reminded of taking the Long Island Railroad back to Manhattan the day after Thanksgiving. I took up two seats for myself and sat next to the window, watching as unfamiliar neighborhoods sped past. When we stopped at the Little Neck station, I looked at the bright, cloud-spotted sky and the wind-blown pampas grass. I didn’t think I had ever seen a field so vast and creamy. It looked so serene.
The train doors closed. The landscape outside slipped by. That was the same train ride when I remembered again the acute, sweet pain of homesickness. I thought about New York―which could be beautiful, in some sense, but was also still alien to me. I felt a little lonely, a single passenger on a train. Most of all, I wished my family could be there with me. That would make it feel more like home.
I do not want to forget this moment. Missing home is possibly the most heartache I have felt since moving away for college, but it is a strange, sharp, warm kind of ache. Like nostalgia, but not anchored in the past. It is tinged with both sadness and tenderness. It makes goodbyes hard, but good.
Tomorrow, the train doors close again, and this train station will again glide past my window. How grateful I am that I know my last destination―and I don’t mean New York.