I called my mother on Sunday from the fire escape of my Astoria apartment, and when she asked how I was, I said fine.
I was not fine. I had cried twice that week — once on the N train, once into a bowl of Maggi noodles that did not taste the way it does at home no matter how many I make.
But you do not tell your mother in Ahmedabad, who worries every single day about her daughter alone in New York, that you cried into your Maggi. You say fine. You show her the sky over Astoria and say, look Mummy, so pretty, na.
Being homesick is a thing nobody warns you about properly. Everyone talks about the hard part being the goodbye at the airport. Nobody tells you the hard part is a random Tuesday in August when the light hits a building a certain way and suddenly you are eight years old and it is the good kind of hot, not this sticky Queens kind.
I asked for this. I fought for this. I did a Fashion Design degree and moved across the actual planet to work in an industry my extended family still does not understand. When they call, I feel their pride and their confusion in equal measure.
So how do I say I am homesick? How do I explain that missing home and loving your life are not opposites, that they live in the same chest, right next to each other, both awake at 2am?
My mother, on the video call, held the phone too close so I could only see half her face. Behind her I could hear the pressure cooker whistling. Three whistles. Dal.
I have started forgetting some Gujarati words. They slip. I reach for them and get English instead, and it feels like losing coins through a hole in my pocket.
Homesick is a word that sounds small and is not.
But she said she is proud of me, and she meant it, and I held that on the fire escape until the sky went dark over Astoria.
Call your mother this week. Even if you have to lie a little.
Love,