Feeling sick

I made a big mistake yesterday by calling home - twice. Now I have opened the Pandora's Box of my homesickness and its contents, fragile as glass butterflies on a shelf, have fallen and shattered. Being away from home at Christmas is not the problem, so much as being away at all.

It started with a call to my sister Jo and her family. To hear their voices, so distance-faint but right in my ear was an ache I could barely tolerate. They sounded as if I could reach out and touch them but they were as far away as a galaxy of cold starts. My niece Isabelle's voice, unintelligable with Christmas excitement and a poor connection, was like a noose, choking me unbearably. I longed to be there to see the Christmas tree she and my sister had decorated, to see the birds they'd put on it, even 'the one that's a bit broken' she'd mentioned. They were going to a carol concert with Mum and Dad. If I'd been at home, I might not have been bothered to go, but as it was impossible to go now, except by a miracle of time travel, then it seemed like the only thing in the world I wanted to do.

Then I called Mum and Dad. This was worse. In a little internet cafe, I sat with my hair flattened by ugly headphones and we managed to get a Skype video call working. There they were, looking the same as ever. Used to the Indian sun-bronzed bodies of Goa, their pallor, once mine too, shocked me like an illness. But they were still them. Dad, his hair fuzzed up with the cold, looking concentrated on getting the computer to work just so. Mum, half-out of the picture, looked tired and had her neck wound round a million times with a home-knit scarf to get rid the last remnants of a lingering cold.

We talked over the top of each other in stutters and starts, until we got the hang of the time delay. Jokes and funny anecdotes were difficult as we had to wait for time - long, like a winding snake - before the reward of a shower of laughter after the punchline. But it was still them, still those dearly-loved faces, though at times their heads were just chunks and blocks of pixels and their voices cracked and broken like crushed ice.

We talked about people, places, friends, family, India, me, them, everyone. Between their heads I could see a patch of Home. Through the open door from the office where they were sitting bunched and squinting in front of Dad's computer, I could see the sitting room door open and through it their green sofa, soft as a bed of moss. The dove-grey English winter was spilling onto it, a vision as through water.

Even as the fan above me stirred the warm night air of India on my bare shoulders, I longed to be part of that cold patch of Home. To be sprawling on the spongy cushions, idly staring at the TV, drinking mug after mug of hot tea, a medicine for my soul. Wrapped in a cuddly cardi to keep out the cold I'd come these thousands of miles to escape, dozing under a blanket soft as winter snow. It was a doorframed image of another paradise, guarded by the faces of the two people who love me and who I love most.

And I came to realise that you always want to be where you cannot be, where you chose to leave behind. Had I  been there, seeing a Goan beach on a travel programme, bright with sunset-rich promise and sweet with palm trees, I'm sure I would have wished myself there. I did wish myself there. I am there now... and now I wish to be back Home.

Homesickness is the cruellest of afflictions. It provokes a longing that courses your body through every vein and pore, leaving an ache, dull and heavy that you cannot rid yourself of. Yet, you know that you have chosen to distance yourself from this place you love. It is the ache that dare not speak its name. How can you admit, in a paradise everyone would love to inhabit, that you wish you were back Home? How is it fair to inflict on others, whose winter misery you expressly chose to run from, the knowledge that you are selfish enough not to be always happy all of the time?

The answer is that it is not fair. I made the decision to leave home and the unspoken law of new chapters; of upending your life voluntarily, of shattering your certainties; of leaving behind the people, places and routines of family and familiarity dictate that I must now be happy with my choice. But total happiness remains elusive at times, because Home is not there to share it all with me.

Everywhere I look I see things, meet people, experience new experiences that I know someone I know would enjoy. When I flush the toilet in my bathroom for the first time and the unusual plumbing produces a fountain of water that exits the bowl in a glittering arc but creates precious little in the way of evacuation activity, I think of Dad (keep with it, you'll see why). Ever-practical, always methodical and careful, he is  good with any situation involving a washer, nut, bolt or spanner. So I picture him standing there shaking his head in amusement and bemusement, saying in frustration something along the lines of, 'What a cack-handed way of doing a bodge-job of a poorly-maintained thing!' And it makes me smile and wish he was there to share it with. To see his face in the mode and manner I predicted would give me a pleasure in a dimension beyond the mere amusement I feel myself.

And there's Mum too. She loves gardening and all around me I see growing wild some of the exotic flowers and foliages I've only ever seen cut and wrapped in plastic that I ordered for the flower shop. Like me, she would love to see these things in their natural state. I picture her, bent at the waist, hands behind her back (so like her own mother in the garden) peering at an insignificant flower or leaf that others would have missed. She would say slowly, 'I think that's a type of ragwort,' or something similar, taking delight in the similarities and differences between plants out here and those back home. She might ponder how she could cultivate it and have a go at growing it 'just for fun'.

It is the small details that make a difference. A shared glance and a grin without words between you and someone who knows your sense of humour, or a nod of the head that indicates something you would find amusing. And you do, because that person knows you well.

Just this morning in a restaurant I spotted a bottle of surface cleaner that made me think of my brother, Martin. Not because he is well-known for his home hygiene, but because the brand name was 'Colin'. Mart takes delight in things such as cleaning products called Colin. Silly, childish things of this nature amuse him - and me - a great deal. Had he been there with me I would have nudged him and pointed it out. He would have laughed and we may well have gone on to a lengthy conversation in which we developed a range of products including washing up liquid, polish and bleach called Steve, Graham and John. As he wasn't there I didn't do this (talking to oneself at 8am in a cafe tends to mark one as a Crazy), just smiled to myself and left it there.

When Aleks was here, he kept pointing out amused, 'Look at Matey-Boy there scratching his balls.' To Aleks, everyone and everything is 'Matey-Boy' if he doesn't know its name. It is his shorthand. So I found myself scanning the scene for a suitable man, woman, child or animal to fit the description. Thankfully this Matey-Boy was a stray dog on the beach, probably suffering from fleas. Now, whenever I see one of the hundreds of Matey-Boys that roam the beach, doing anything unusual or amusing I wish Aleks were here so I could point out my own Matey-Boy spotting.

I'm sure much of this is brought on by the festive season to which I thought I would be immune out here. Even in this haven of foreigners, there is little to suggest the imminent approach of Santa - although Jesus and the Virgin Mary are well-represented in curious little permanent shrines that seem to sprout from odd places, like in front of a shop, bang in the middle of the dirt 'pavement', or under a coconut palm, covered in dust and drooping marigold garlands.

There are few strings of tinsel and sounds of carols, but even if they were visible or audible, I would not be able to connect them with the Christmases I have always known: cold, dark by three and Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve; rarely-snowy, mince pie-bloated and wine-warmed. It is hot and hot is not Christmas. Yet calls back Home and the visits to Facebook I torture myself with, tell me that it is Christmas and lock me, unwillingly, into a connection with it and all that it means to me. And that primarily is family.

I don't know how the planned video call on Christmas Day will go when all the family should be gathered round to gawp at my jerky image, but I think that any sparkles in my eyes are more likely to be tears than anything to do with festive glitter.