I went to Astoria on Sunday because sometimes Manhattan is too loud even in its silence, and the N train delivers you somewhere gentler.
There's a Greek bakery near Ditmars where I get a cheese pie and pretend I have my life together. I was sitting outside, watching the neighborhood do its slow Sunday thing, when I saw them.
A mother and her grown daughter. Sharing one table, one pot of tea, one silence that only people who love each other completely can sit inside without needing to fill it.
And the homesickness came up through the floor of me like water.
I don't call it homesickness usually. It sounds so small. But that's what it is. My mother is eight thousand miles and nine and a half hours away, and right now she is probably asleep, and I cannot walk into a kitchen and have her hand me chai without asking.
Homesickness in New York is a strange animal. It doesn't come when you expect it, at Diwali or during a hard week. It comes on a random Sunday in Astoria watching strangers who have what you're missing.
I FaceTimed her right there on the sidewalk. Bad connection. She was groggy. She held the phone too close to her face like she always does, one giant eye filling my whole screen, and I laughed and something in my chest unclenched.
'Beta, eat something,' she said, which is her way of saying I love you and I worry and come home.
The mother and daughter in Astoria finished their tea and left arm in arm. I sat a while longer with my cheese pie and my one giant eye of a mother on video, and it was enough. It had to be enough.
Some Sundays the homesickness wins a little. That's allowed too.
Call your mother. She's probably holding the phone too close.
Love,