Praha 11, or I Swear, This Is The Last One Today
(written 1/28/07)

First: good news. I just got the message that my luggage has been found! Hopefully I’ll get it by tomorrow. That’s about 10 days for anyone who was counting.

Now…

There’s a Sesame Street special that my parents taped when I was a kid. In it, I think all the characters went to Japan, but I could be mixing it up with the one where they all get locked in a museum overnight. Anyway, in one of those episodes, Big Bird sings a song about being homesick. I don’t remember any of the lyrics, just ol’ Big Bird in his yellow feathers resting his chin in his hand and singing “homesick…homesick…”

That moment of Sesame Street has never left me. I’ve remembered it many times, mostly at summer camp. You see, I’ve never been homesick before, not really. I was always that camper who mamaleh’d the other kids when they were crying into their sleeping bags. My second summer at Glen Spey Girl Scout camp, I was eight or nine years old, and one girl would just not stop crying. It was probably about ten o’clock at night, long after our lights-out, and she was just sniffling and gasping like her dog had died. I snuck out of my cot and went over to her, sitting on the hard tent floor.

“Hey,” I said. “Did you ever see that episode of Sesame Street where Big Bird sings that song?” Of course, I knew exactly what I was talking about, but it took a little while to get the message across to her clearly enough. Once we were on the same page, however, we started a whole conversation about different episodes of Sesame Street, and before I knew it I was sneaking back to my sleeping bag and she was snoring instead of sniffling.

I’ve talked about Sesame Street to many campers since that first time – many of them don’t know the particular episode, but most kids around my generation have seen enough Sesame Street to have a favorite episode, or at least a favorite character. Somehow, the childhood familiarity does a lot to ease the loneliness of homesickness in hard moments. Even when I had thirteen year old campers two summers ago, there were some kids who had a rough time adjusting to camp, and I spent many long goodnights rubbing a kid’s back and chatting about Sesame Street.

I’ve never felt homesickness like this before. It hits me the most in the evening, right when everyone’s out at the bars, or before I go to bed. It hits me like an unexpected punch in the nose, the kind that makes your eyes water. All I have to do is think of someone I love back home – a friend, my partner, even my grandma – and suddenly, it’s all I can do to stop crying.

I have a few theories about why this is. The first is that I’m not quite focused yet. Every camp counselor knows that the first thing you can do to help a homesick kid is keep them as busy as possible. I haven’t been busy. I’ve been luxuriously free to do whatever I want, and I’ve definitely had some fun, but it also leaves me way too much time to think. However, classes start tomorrow, and I have classes nonstop from 9am-4pm. That should be a good distraction.

The second is that some of my coping mechanisms have been compromised. Singing always – always – gives me that kind of strength. In some situations, I’ve managed to not be homesick solely on the power of my own voice. But this damn echo chamber of an apartment is so loud, I can’t sing at all. People keep asking me to be quiet, no matter what time of day it is. I’ve only been able to sing on the street – and I’ve been warned against that too – and when my apartment is empty. Another one of my coping mechanisms is to have clean laundry and clean sheets, always. This has worked somewhat, as I’m learning to drape my clothes over the heaters to dry, and how to work the washing machine so that it washes cold when I want it to. But it’s far from comfortable.

And the last two things I learned from camp – write letters, and never ever call home, not until the homesickness has passed. At first, I thought this policy was fail-safe, but I’ve been writing letters and blog essays of epic proportion, and I’m still homesick. So I broke my own rules and called Hopkins Kitchen tonight. It was agonizingly perfect – exactly what I needed, and exactly what I didn’t. It seemed like all my friends had just happened to gather in the kitchen, and the phone just happened to be working that day, and everyone had such nice things to say, and I could practically smell dinner cooking in the background….

I’ve become that kid I could never understand, but could always comfort. Angela told me to wrap my arms around myself and pretend she’s hugging me. Countless people told me to write, to vent, if I needed anything, anything at all…

So yes, I need something. I need you to talk to me about Sesame Street. Tell me about your favorite episode, tell me about your favorite characters. Tell me what you thought of the Muppet cast and whether or not they belonged there. Tell me how you hated it when Elmo became more of a star than Big Bird, or if you were alive when Luis and Maria got married, or when Mr. Hooper died.

Talk to me about Sesame Street, and I’ll talk to you about Oscar secretly being my favorite character because he was green. And how I thought Kermit was kind of a sap, but I totally understood his relationship with Miss Piggy. And how I loved the 20th anniversary episode that Bill Cosby hosted with Cookie Monster, or the museum episode where Cookie Monster was so good he didn’t eat a single painting in the Met, but then ate the entire hot dog cart outside of it. And how Big Bird sings another song called “What A Bird” that contains the lyrics “and though I’m big and tall / on this you can depend / I’ll scrunch down small / cuz you’re my most important friend.”

I’ll close with the lyrics I wish I could belt out my window onto the quiet midnight of Vinoradska Street:

Sing, sing a song
Sing out loud
Sing out strong
Sing all you can with me
Sing, sing a song
Make it simple
To last your whole life long
Don’t worry that it’s not good enough
For anyone else to hear
Sing…sing a song
La la la la la…