Catching the Cold: Putting the “Sick” in Homesick

My nose is running, and it kind of hurts to swallow, and there’s a funny taste in my mouth. I can’t really describe the taste. Maybe it’s less of a taste and more of a feeling. Because it sits in my mouth, and it’s mixed with my sense of smell, and it’s some subdued blend of static noise. That’s the best way I can put it: It tastes like static noise, and it feels a little sour on my tongue. And I’m sitting here in the Science Center trying to do my chemistry homework but I can’t, really, because there’s a static taste in my mouth and I’m thinking of home.

And when I tell people about this, they say it’s a freshman-year thing, because, of course, you think of home when things change. But this feels different. Because I do think of home, all the time I’m thinking of home. I think about home when it gets unbearably windy here, and I think about my mom’s cooking when Val serves sauteed green beans, and I think about my hometown friends when I hear the song “Kilby Girl.” But all of these are tangible things that I’m holding onto: I miss California’s warm weather, and sauteed green beans were the first thing my mom taught me to cook, and I used to blast “Kilby Girl” in the car with my friends when we drove off campus for our 40-minute lunch period.

But right now, with this static taste in my mouth, I’m not thinking of home in any tangible way. I don’t know exactly what it is about home that I’m thinking about. And I wouldn’t say that I’m missing home either, because I don’t have any desire to physically be home. So I’m not chasing home in the sense of wanting to go back, but I’m nostalgic for some kind of feeling. I think it has to do with vulnerability.

I say vulnerability because the common cold makes you feel just a little bit subhuman. Everyday actions that are normally thoughtless seem to have a little more friction to them. Of course, it’s silly to get too caught up in these minor inconveniences, but still — it’s a subtly vulnerable thing to have to open my mouth to breathe, to need to stuff my pockets with tissues before I leave my dorm in the morning, to be able to focus on my chemistry work for maybe 20 minutes at a time before I need to briefly lie back, face the ceiling, and close my eyes to let them rest. I feel like a child again: helpless and unproductive, but yielding completely to it.

I think that’s where this nostalgic feeling comes from. Because when I was seven years old with this familiar cold and convinced my parents that I should stay home from school, it was probably hard to breathe through my nose too. The corners of my nose were also probably pink and irritated from being squeezed by so many tissues. I was probably lying on the brown living room couch with some warm honey water from my dad, watching cable TV, unable to think about or focus on much else. And I probably had a static taste in my mouth.

Maybe 20 years down the line, I’ll be at work when the common cold catches me again. Or maybe I’ll be in my own house that I pay my own mortgage for. Or maybe I’ll be picking up my kids from school. I don’t know who I’ll be, or what I’ll be doing, or what color my living room couch will be. But I know that I’ll feel this same pressure in my throat when I swallow, and I know I’ll have to stop and take a breath every few sips of warm honey water because my nose will be stuffed, and I know I’ll have a funny static taste in my mouth.

And so I know I’ll think of home, which makes this sickness not so bad to bear.