I’m recently returned from a trip to the mainland, mostly to visit with my adult sons and to check in with other friends and family. While away, I started feeling an anxious longing that I eventually identified as homesickness. It was an entirely new feeling for adult me.
I have often remarked that, even before I actually moved here, the island place feels like home in a way I haven’t experienced since living at my grandparents’ house when I was a child. Now that I have made many, many changes to the compound, I feel even more rooted here.
I found myself regularly checking in with the security cameras around the place… not because I was worried about security, but just to see what things looked like. Turning on the sound so I could hear the birds and the breezes in the trees and even the coquí frogs made the experience even more poignant.
It’s good to be home. Though it was great to see my family and old friends, I now have an even stronger sense of where I belong.
—2p