Temporary TCKid Home

This morning I woke to a strange sound. My ears prodded my faintly conscious mind awake to this rare phenomenon and it took a few groggy tries to pull myself out of sleep before I recognized what this sound actually was: rain!

It hardly ever rains in Los Angeles and this is the second treat I have gotten in 2 weeks. And though by other city standards this hardly even counts, having been so deprived from it while living here, the smallest sign of it is welcome…even if sometimes it is a 2-minute sky spit fest.

But this morning’s rain is doing pretty okay. My window panes are actually wet and it’s lasting us a few hours. Nothing compared to days of rain I used to enjoy but I’ll take what I can get.

The moment I recognized it was the sound of rain pattering against my window, I sunk deeper into my blankets and for a quick moment lapsed into a memory. I immersed myself so deep in this memory, I think I could have fooled myself into believing it was real. I wanted to tell myself it was real – that I was in fact back in another place, another time. The rain told me so. It took me back into moments I have carefully stored away in my treasured memories.

I could hear the sounds from my memory coming alive, joining the rain to sing again the songs they once sung for me. I explored the world within this dream, trying to remember every detail and sparking them into existence in my mind. The smells, sounds, feels, and emotions. Even the light and shade, the touch of the window against my hands. It was blissful. Painfully so. The joy that erupted in me also tore into me with the reminder that these moments will never return to me, that this place and this time no longer exists anywhere in the world.

I am homesick for a world that is not there. What do you do with a pain without an antidote? If I’m hungry, I eat. If I’m tired, I sleep. If I’m homesick, where do I go “home” to?