Missing the memories that will never get made
- geekgirlabroad
- Jan 5, 2024
- 3 min read
“The way that you wander is the way that you choose. The day that you tarry is the day that you lose.”
If you don’t know where those lyrics came from, I think my father would describe you as “uncultured.” He would be correct. They’re from Jeremiah Johnson, the song found in the movie of the same name. I think I can quote the whole film beginning to end. I’ve yelled the best of the one-liners through more than one blizzard and laughed to hear them while trying to light soggy matches at the end of a fourteen-hour day. (Please note, I finally gave up on the matches and dug through every pack, pocket, and saddle bag I own and a few I don’t to find an actual lighter. I have no standards and the patience of a toddler when my feet are cold.)
There are perhaps another dozen other books, movies, and songs that have received the same treatment throughout my life. Most of them uncouth, irreverent, or otherwise not palatable to the general populace. And here, about 7,000 miles distant from the places and people that inspired most of that content, I sit, rewriting this blog post for about the sixth time in three days, and I probably still don’t have it quite right.
You see, over the holidays I have had more than a few of the delightful and caring humans in my life ask a question along the lines of…
“So, are you homesick for anything yet?”
“What are you missing most about being away from home for the holidays?”
“What can we send that you can’t get there?”
The answer I gave at the time was Cheez-Its, and while I stand by that, and keep checking the mail for my box of them, it isn’t the whole picture, is it? Because most of the time I don’t even seem to feel homesickness. When people around me who are also thousands of miles away from their origins describe the things they miss, I never seem to quite understand. For a while I would have even said I don’t get homesick.
What I have since realized and am still struggling to articulate is that homesickness isn’t as simple as missing a place or a person, or even a country, or set of conveniences or amenities. It’s missing a culture which contains maybe three total people; it’s lacking the ability to be with someone who misses the same things. It’s even just realizing the real opportunity cost of living where and how one does. It’s not being able to grieve in the same colors of loneliness as even other lonely people in the same crowd. It has only been recently that I’ve realized the particular aloneness of having an increasingly odd set of life experiences.
Because there are some days, I would give almost anything to be back holding those soggy matches. And I wake up in the wee hours to fireflies on my mosquito net wishing they were sparks on horseshoes above the timberline. I feel foolish trying to explain hammering ice off of pack knots with a rock to people who’ve only seen mules in pictures. I see the placid, cloudy water of the river here, and I wish I were pulling oars in a river that flowed faster and felt more like home. I know that every day I spend here, I lose the skills I had when I was somewhere else, knowing I may never do those things again.
The things I miss don’t fit in boxes or phone calls. They can’t be shipped or stored for later. I miss making memories with people who would understand. And even now, I don’t know what to do with that. Thus far I have prescribed myself sad cowboy music, and that takes the edge off. Or maybe makes it worse. The jury is still out.
That’s it. There’s no big, uplifting conclusion to this one. I have a sticker from Cheyenne Frontier Days on my water bottle, but I live somewhere there has never been a horse. It makes me think that I can’t be the only one half a world away from memories that may never get made.
To be clear, I’m not just wallowing here. After all as the song said, I wandered the way that I chose. And that doesn’t mean I’m not still trying to find a way to make the pieces of my experiences fit together. There are probably mules in Africa, and there’s definitely mountains and white water. But some things just need saying, so now it’s been said.
(For interested parties, you can find my personal playlist of sad cowboy music linked here.)
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