There's a rooftop in Astoria I sneak up to when I can't sleep. My friend Nikita lives on the top floor near 30th Ave and she gave me a key like it was nothing, which is the kind of friendship you don't announce, you just hold.
Last night I went up there at midnight. The N train was rattling by below, the Hell Gate Bridge lit up in the distance, and it was warm the way August in New York is warm, thick and forgiving. And out of nowhere the homesickness arrived, uninvited, sat down next to me.
So I called my mother in Ahmedabad. It was already morning there. She was making chai, I could hear the pressure cooker, I could hear my father asking where his glasses were the way he has asked every single day of my remembered life.
Homesickness is a strange animal. It doesn't come when you'd expect it. Not on Diwali, not on my birthday, when I've braced for it. It comes at midnight on an Astoria rooftop when a train goes by and I suddenly cannot remember the exact sound of my street at home.
My mother didn't ask why I was calling so late. She just talked. About my cousin's engagement, about the mangoes being good this year, about the neighbor's daughter who is also, apparently, unmarried and therefore a comfort to her. She narrated her kitchen to me and I sat on a rooftop in Queens and let it fill the homesickness up.
"You sound tired, beta," she said. And I said I was fine, which is what daughters say, and she pretended to believe me, which is what mothers do.
We hung up. The N train came again. I stayed up there a while longer, not sad exactly, just full. This city gives me everything and asks, quietly, for that one thing back.
I love it here. I miss there. Both are true, and I'm learning to let them be.
Call your mother while the chai is still hot.
Love,