Last to Know

I don't call my mom every day. Sometimes I'll cal her three days in a row, then go a week without talking to her. Sometimes the calls are an hour, sometimes its "Oh good, you're alive. What? You want money for a MetroCard? Fiiiine. Goodbye."

This means I'm often the last to know things. And that gets a little difficult.

I went home over the weekend for my mom's birthday party. I say party, but really it was my brother, my dad, my aunt, and my grammy eating cake. My brother showed me how he'd redone his room! He also recited his poem for a school competition for me (Anthem for Doomed Youth, one of my favourites.) My mom mentioned someone at work to my father - someone who I don't even know the name of. (I used to know the names of all my mom's colleagues.) I hadn't heard any of these stories over the phone. I didn't know about anything about their jokes or their lives.

And I realized that I hadn't told them everything. They didn't know I had walked the Highline with Sam. They didn't know about that really awesome dinner I got at a new burrito place near the dorms. They hadn't seen the silly pictures Stacey and I took while she was in her red panda pyjamas.

I think I've finally discovered what "homesickness" is. It's knowing that my family is doing all this amazing stuff, and I'm not there to see it.