Find a cure for homesickness
Transcript:
Hello and welcome to Fortune Cookie, your monthly cookie crackle served on a small tray
Today it is served briskly, by a serving staff member who has no time for niceties.
JK you know it's me, Wendy, although there's a place in Toronto called House of Gourmet where we often get this one serving staff member who treats confirming your order like a drill sergeant roll call and it is stressful.
Welcome to our first episode of 2021! As much as 2020 was uniquely painful, I actually had been so excited about how nicely "2020" rolled off the tongue and now I say 2020, pause, one, because it's just not as natural. It's like how you spend the better part of a year still writing the previous year on applications, bullet journals, COVID screening forms, and by the time you've got it engrained to write the actual year, it's time to learn the new year you're supposed to be writing. On the bright side, this is a uniquely special year because you can get away with that mistake all year. If you accidentally write 20, take a deep breath, and then add 21 at the end and you're still golden.
Making mistakes on documents always makes me amused at how for some reason when you graduated from your last place of formal education, what you didn't realize is that you were graduating from being allowed to use white out in a public setting. Sorry, not white out, correction tape to use the non-branded term. I had the correction tape, the one that you spread like nail polish, and the one that came out of a little ballpoint tip for the most precise of corrections. Whip them out on your study notes, pass them around to a friend in need, try not to inhale the fumes too much, but after you leave school you're on your own for filling in airport forms, cheques, passport applications and the like. Ironically I believe correction tape was invented to make life easier for people on typewriters, who were mostly working class adults. And here I am a few decades later explaining how as an adult you're expected to get through life without much correction tape. Please let me know if you even own a form of correction tape, and if you do, how often you use it, and finally, if you can recall the last time you ever used it in public.
I have this one that clicks to retract which I love because nothing sucked more than buying a new correction tape and have it make a mess of little white bits in your pencil case because the tape was exposed.
Anyways, welcome to episode 5!!
I've been doing a thing where I crack open a window to read a little letter or story in this podcast, but I realized what I should have been doing is taking you to the setting of fortune cookies, the restaurant!
[door opens, restaurant ambience heard]
While we're on things we used to do and things we will do instead in the future, last episode I sent out an ask, a plea, for some kind people to give me feedback on how they thought this podcast was going. Let me know what they like, what they don't like, and I got a few emails which was so incredibly helpful. Thank you! If you have thoughts you didn't get to send me yet, you can just take them and shove them into an email to podcast@iamwithwendy.com. I asked because I'm looking forward to a new year and I want to make this podcast better, I've had maybe... 7-8/10 level of fun making this podcast but I want to bump it up to 8-9/10. I'm not a natural writer, nor a natural speaker, but I at least want to have fun connecting here with you all. Many of the emails said you liked to hear me share stories, so we'll keep doing that, although sometimes I wonder if I'll run out! I'm going to be relying on my extensive diary collection to help me out if I'm stuck. But also, if you have a story you'd like me to share with everyone, I don't mind giving that a try too. Once again, podcast@iamwithwendy.com, an email inbox that's open 24/7 for you.
[restaurant sounds fade]
Today's fortune cookie is: find a cure for homesickness
[opening a fortune cookie] (delete the first 14:21:08 of fortune cookie audio to get this clip)
My feelings of homesickness kept growing over the course of 2020. I last saw my parents and hometown in January 2020 and there's no real date within sight where I can say for certain that I'll see them or Calgary. That's my hometown.
The feelings come and go, most days it doesn't even cross my mind, but then on some random evening I'll be curled up in bed shedding a few tears
Sometimes it's even just after I get off the phone with my parents, seeing them talk and smile and go about their own life somehow is both relieving and saddening
From there I go down a train of thoughts, although I feel like it's more like some messy web of thoughts since there is no clear sequence
I'm happy for them, I'm concerned for their well-being, I'm curious what they're up to, I grieve how much I don't know about them even though they are my parents, or maybe because they are my parents
I wish I could know all their daily details, and yet I know that's impractical and impossible
On top of that I know that I don't have enough patience for that level of intimacy anyways because I'm doing my own life too, and that's why I don't actually sit there absorbing everything about them despite thinking that I want to or should
And then I think that realistically, it's a good outcome that I love them, have a healthy relationship with them, but am living my own life while they live theirs, and that my sadness is not necessary, but certainly real
I feel silly and childish, and that's probably why it ends with me crying it out and getting on with my life
learning to cook my parent's dishes (my parents both cook, would like to compete on who is better)
parents cooked a mixture of Chinese and western dishes
sometimes I didn't like the flavour of certain Chinese dishes, but I would have it in China and it would be totally different
now I get really excited when I find Chinese ingredients in my grocery store, or take a slightly longer trip to visit a Chinese grocery store
dumplings, steamed egg, smashed cucumber garlic salad, green onion bread
a dating dealbreaker with Dan was that he had to be able to use chopsticks, it's a sign of culinary open-mindedness that I believed important to compatibility
now also trying to share those recipes with my in-laws, which is nice
another way homesickness has manifested is in candles
I love pine scents, anything that reminds me of coniferous forests, mountain air, and a fire pit
Paddywax makes national parks series, the wick makes a crackling sound
I'll light them maybe once a week, especially in winter it is a comforting smell
recently Dan and I actually got a kitten so I've refrained from candles for the time being
Kitten is as far as possible as I could go from combatting homesickness
I never had any pets growing up, at most sea monkeys which technically belonged to my brother and mostly stayed in his room
I have friends who have a deep love for their furry pets, but I've never wanted what they had
Dan is the one who really wanted a kitten, and he put in all the research and correspondence to find one with a good temperament and healthy genetics, I guess to help me start on an easier footing with something so new
We love her! She's so playful and cute, when she sleeps she makes little paw motions like she's grabbing the air
I think I'm coming to understand the appeal of having a pet, even though previously I could only think of negative things like all the work, time, cost, and if I'm really introspective, I don't like getting emotionally attached to things because it means someday I might have to experience the loss of such things
It's a sad reason to keep something at arm’s length, and I'm working on that. The reality is life is full of gain and loss, and to grieve something proves that on the other side of that coin you really loved something, and that's beautiful
Perhaps that brings us full circle with homesickness, or nostalgia, the suffering that comes from thinking of a place to which you cannot return
Homesickness sucks, but somewhere in there I am grateful that I have things I love, even if they're far away
If you're feeling homesick like me, what kinds of things make it easier for you, and do you think you're homesick for a real or a place that you've kind of made up in your mind?
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All our previous episodes are on Spotify, Apple podcasts, and my website withwendy.com. Fortune Cookie With Wendy is edited and produced with assistance from Michelle Choi. Thank you Musicbed for providing all our music, and thank you so much for being here and opening up with us, talk to you in the next episode, bye-bye!