Homesick

Let me tell you something about my parents' house: it smells like laundry detergent. It smells like the most amazing laundry detergent you've ever smelled in your whole life. In fact, it smells so incredible that when you smell it on your husbands shirt 6 months after your last visit home, it makes you cry... a lot. Well, I guess that's just speaking from my own personal experience, but I would assume it's the same for anyone else as attached to my home as I am! Sometimes, I forget how homesick I am- it's like a defense mechanism. If I forget how much I miss my family, and my home, and North Carolina, then it doesn't hurt so bad. And if it doesn't hurt so bad, I can pretend like I'm happy here in Utah. And if I can pretend (very convincingly) that I'm happy in Utah, then maybe I'll survive these next 3 years while my husband is in school. And if I can do that, then I know he'll take me home as soon as he can and then I can stop pretending. Now, I know that sounds bad. But really it's not nearly as awful as it sounds. Like I said, most of the time I forget how much I miss my home. But every once in a while, it sneaks up on me and takes me by surprise. Like the other night when Chris said to me: "come smell my shirt! It smells like your house..." I closed my eyes and held the shirt up to my nose, and I remembered every time I walked into our house on my visits home. I relived that same pang I feel every time I've walked into the house and remembered that I don't live there anymore and that I can't stay. It's funny how just a smell can do that do you. It can jolt your memory in the funniest ways. Even though my mom is a wonderful baker, and I came home from school on numerous occasions to cookies or brownies baking in the oven- it's the scent of her laundry detergent that says HOME to me. I tried to hide laundry sheets all over our apartment, hoping the smell would permeate through the three rooms we've got, but no such luck. It smelled for about a day, and then went away. And now I just have dryer sheets hidden all over the place, I can't even find them all! When I have a home, even just when I have a washer and dryer in our apartment, that will be the first thing I do- make sure it smells like home.