fernweh

You know the feeling.

You drive past a house on your block and suddenly the shadows cutting across the tree in the front yard take you back to that day in July when you were five and drinking out of the hose in nothing but a dirty swimsuit. And your feet were full of slivers which your mom would peel out later using tweezers.

You smell the PERT plus shampoo at the grocery store and your grandma's bathroom comes into view, the pastel pink linoleum (was it that color?), the brown accents in the cabinetry, the night you had to use a pad for the first time and dig for it in that very bathroom, and the thing was much too big and humiliating for a 12 year old. 

You kick through a path of soggy leaves on your way to work, and the sound is too perfect, just like crossing the bridge in the night at Camp Alpine and accidentally killing a banana slug, that awful SCHWAP! stamping slug murderer on your forehead. 

I go back there, wherever there is, when nothing makes sense or even when everything does, maybe it's too much for me in my present moment and closing my eyes against the pain elevates it in some way. It does not go away. It never goes away.

In German, the word is fernweh. According to Wikipedia, the translation comes to "farsickness" or "longing for far-off places", as contrasted with Heimweh (“homesickness, longing for home”).

And if you like serendipity, listen to this: while writing this post, the song "Rocky Mountain High" by John Denver came on my Spotify shuffle. He just so happened to sing this line: "He was born in the summer of his 27th year/ Coming home to a place he'd never been before / He left yesterday behind him, you might say he was born again/ You might say he found a key for every door."