I took the 7 train out to Jackson Heights on Saturday because I needed blouse fabric, and I ended up needing my mother instead.
If you've never been, 74th Street in Jackson Heights is basically a portion of India that fell out of the sky and landed in Queens. Gold jewelry glittering behind glass. The smell of jalebi. Aunties bargaining with a confidence I will never possess in this lifetime.
I walked into a sari shop where the walls were stacked floor to ceiling with folded color. The man unrolled bolt after bolt without me even asking, the way they do, letting fabric pour across the counter like water.
And suddenly I was eight years old, sitting on a similar counter in Ahmedabad, swinging my legs while my mother pressed silk between her fingers and made that little "hmm" sound she makes when something is either very good or very overpriced.
Missing my mother in a Jackson Heights sari shop is a specific ambush. It doesn't announce itself. You're fine, you're comparing two shades of maroon, and then your throat is doing something and you have to look very intently at a border print so the shopkeeper doesn't notice.
We video call every Sunday. But a screen can't hand me fabric. She can't reach through and tuck a pleat and tell me I've chosen wrong.
I bought the maroon. Of course I did. She would have talked me out of it and into something better, and part of me bought it just to feel her disapproval from six thousand miles away.
Missing my mother in a Jackson Heights sari shop taught me something I keep re-learning: homesickness isn't about a place. It's about the people who made that place feel like home.
I called her from the 7 train platform. She picked up on the second ring, like she always does.
Call your mother today. I'll wait.
Love,