I have been suffering from the disease for 5 years. Am going to insist wife move out there with me for awhile. Steve in Baltimore County.

Steve, I sure hope you get to go soon. I'm a real believer that everyone should be able/willing to accept someone's strong feelings about travel or whatever...and everyone's happier for it.

Meldy, I'm glad your DH understood (or at least went along with the change in plans). I've an aversion to travel myself, but didn't have the sense to recognize it and act accordingly until I was in my mid-thirties.

My son was four and we were flying to visit DH's parents. I reasoned they really were most wanting to see their son and grandson..so opted to stay home...making some excuse re a slight illness. Then that summer DH and son went to beach together. After that, it was easier...we just did what each wanted to do.

DH and son enjoyed their trips...trains and planes fascinated them equally, they loved seeing buildings DH had designed all over SE. DH also traveled alone to college/band reunions or music festivals...something I wasn't interested in. We did travel together for visiting friends but mutually agreed on. Worked out best for us. Now I don't want to travel at all... at all. josh

Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.

Several times during my first two years living in the US, when I'd have a major weeping fit, and stomp to the kitchen and make toast and Marmite to cheer myself up.

But most memorably, last summer: we took the step-offspring, and their respective spouses, on a trip to the UK for a week. The steps had spent two years there as teenagers. We spent a few days in London, and a few days in the Cotswolds. Driving along to the hotel, through green fields full of spring lambs, I began to feel an ache.

An hour later, we checked in, and all sat down for afternoon tea. At this point I was feeling awful, but struggled to hold it all together. And then we went for a walk outside, along the village street, and I just HOWLED. I mean, deep, racking sobs, my head buried in Himself's chest, keening.

The Steps very tactfully tiptoed in the other direction, while Himself did everything he could think of to make me feel better, including rashly offering to move back. I didn't take him up on it, but after a good hug, I felt less awful, just astonished.

You described it perfectly: a kick in the stomach.

Perhaps not in the way you describe but the memories of the farm life and the more simple less hurried era of my childhood have a grip on me that seems to grow stronger as I age even though I know that it can't be reclaimed nor should it be. But, this weekend I am going to a family reunion to the tiny village near where I grew up. I have really mixed feelings, wanting to see the cousins and their offspring but knowing that my beloved sister won't be there except in our collective memories make it difficult to think about.

A grand neice Michaela rather summed up the every 2 year renunion by saying "Don't you feel safe here? I'll bet you could get a hug from anyone here, they all kind of look alike." She may have been all of eleven or twelve then.

I've lived in a lot of different states and been away from home for different lengths of time,when a child,when a teenager and when married. We've lived on Lake Michigan,on Long Island Sound,minutes from the Golden Gate and right next to a wheat field. I have been "homesick" for a place only once and that was when we left Arizona. We were surrounded on 3 sides by mountains over 2,000 feet and there is something about seeing those monsters 24/7 that just get into your soul,and it's hard to explain. We were only there a year but when we left and moved to Connecticut,I ached for those mountains. It lasted for about a month.I remember during that time watching Gunsmoke on tv and when I saw the mountains I burst into tears.

Never on vacation, but I have been homesick for St. Louis since we moved to Texas. We had a huge family of friends there who we used to celebrate holidays with & I miss their feet underneath my dinner table. It's always nice to go back to visit, but when we do, I realize that we're only visitors & that we're no longer part of people's lives like we used to be when we lived there.

I'm one of those "bloom where you're planted" kind of people, so I don't dwell on it, but it is a pang from time to time.

You all know how I feel about my beloved Virginia
and her mountains where I was born.

When I go back for a visit I feel that familiar tug
on my heart. I've always thought that i'd go back home to live but it hasn't happened.
I get such a calm peaceful feeling from the mountains of
my youth and I feel safe when surrounded by them.

Once when we had been vacationing in europe for a
considerable amount of time we walked past an american
embassy and when I saw our flag I was overcome with such
a feeling of homesickness I just stood there with tears
streaming down my face. Luckily we were only a couple of
days away from returning home so I managed.

I can't begin to comprehend how Sara and Sheila feels
living permanently in another country. I don't think I
could do it even though I love England and Scotland and I
have always thought that if I were given the oportunity to
live in either of those places or in Italy that I would
go in a heartbeat.

I was born and raised in Mid-Missouri, but have lived in Illinois for the past 40+ years. Everytime I visited "home" it still felt like that was where I belonged and the longing to pack up and move made me want to weep.

Recently, nearly every one I cared for there has gone, so the draw isn't so strong. Makes me wonder if it was a sense of place or a sense of belonging because of the people. A lot like Gandle's neice -- I felt like I could knock on almost any door and be welcome. DH cannot understand my wish to have my ashes buried there, but I still want to spend eternity surrounded by the family who were so important to my growing up.

My family were nomads from the time I was very young. It never dawned on me not to be excited about where/when the next move would be. My mother was a real trouper about picking up cats/dogs/cars/furniture and taking it and us to follow my father halfway around the world, handling all the details herself until we met up with him.

Our family was very tightly knit, and no matter what the circumstances, and with what she had to make do with or learn to use, our house was always "home" whereever we went. We have lived in houses with grass mat floors, squat toilets, charcoal fired hot water tanks, long eerie drives with tall stone walls, by the sea, in the forests, with convents next door, and abandoned machine gun bunkers across the road. No matter where, it was always just "home" and felt right being there.

Then as I approached adolescence, some kind of gene kicked in and I got to the point where each location was so home that I didn't want to ever leave it. I'd made mental promises to myself that I'd always finish growing up, and then move back. Then never did.

I have the feeling that now I am where I am meant to be, my father's birthplace, and the little tendrils have wrapped around me and are holding me here now. I don't long so much anymore, but there was a time in my life when each night as I drifted off to sleep, my dream me would go back to those homes over and over. I guess that is one reason I liked Acorn's poem so very much. I really think my spirit did.

I often think about people's attitudes to moving. With the exception of leaving Dallas, which I did without a qualm, it's always been hard for me. I seem to ave a taproot that starts drilling down wherever I live, and uprooting myself is a painful process. As much as I like to travel, and as much as I fulminate over things that are going on in this country, I know that I could never live permanently overseas. I've usually chalked that up to being too American, but I really think it's that taproot thing. But I like to think that I serve a useful function to my more wondering inclined friends. I'm always here to receive the laptops whose motherboards have been blown out by erratic power in Uganda & deliver them to the computer repair shops, and to mail the juicy articles from Vanity Fair to my friend who is working in the UAE.

I can relate to meldys and janis emotions tho in a little different way. We lived in Ankara Turkey for 3 yrs in the early 60,s. It was a little like going back in time 2000 yrs. But i loved it. We made a lot of turkish friends and just kind of fell in with the local life. We would go to the American embassy for drinking water and library books. The building was a beautiful white and the the flag flying above it Tears of pride would always come to my eyes as soon as i caught sight of it. The Russian embassy was across the street ,The bldg was dark and gloomy with a high ugly fence around it. a perfect comparison for those times.

When we came home from Turkey, we landed in NYC and had to take a cab from the airport to our hotel downtown. Talk about culture shock. The wild ride, traffic,noise,so many people and traffic. I cried and told DH i wanted to go back to Turkey NOW!! Of course when we got back to ARK i was very glad to be home.
I will never forget the great pride i felt in my flag and embassy,or the dispare of feeling like i landed on another planet.
vickie

Janis, althouugh the first two years were hard, it was much easier once we bought a house where I could make a garden. I like Andie's analogy of the taproot: it's how I feel too, and here I could put down my root and feel this patch of earth was mine. For a while, my private world ended at the end of the driveway: once I got home, I felt really at home again.

Once we were in Toronto, and I went to an exhibition of photographs at the ROM, of immigrants and their gardens. All had commented how their gardens let them feel at home: they grew things from their home countries, they felt the soil was helping them find their new home. I felt an instant tug of recognition, and - again - started crying, in the middle of the museum, feeling here were people who knew how I felt.

Sara the Weepy One.