Cape Karen
Yep. I'm very homesick. I want to walk the beach and hear the ocean waves as they wash in and out. To me that sound is like a heartbeat, having grown up listening to it all my life. I miss that sound - and, trust me, the sound of the Pigeon River doesn't even come close.
I've been here in the TN mountains for nine years now, with only two short trips back to Cape Cod. One for a funeral and one for a wedding.
I have planned to return. . . but life keeps getting in the way.
I wanted to attend my 40th High School Reunion in 2001, but three weeks before, on June 1st of that year, I came down with a sudden case of Bell's Palsy. For those of you who don't know what that is - it's when one side of your face gets paralyzed, and you end up looking like something out of a Stephen King novel for a while. Bell's Palsy usually resolves itself within weeks, but in my case it took six months, and it has never completely resolved. (I still can't bring up a smile on the right side of my face. When I try, my right eye shuts, and I look really weird.) Other than that, you wouldn't really know, unless I told you.
There's one good aspect, however, when you're my age and one side of your face is frozen - no wrinkles! One side has none, the other side has them all. So, if I show you my right side, I look pretty damn good - but if I turn my left side to face you, I look like Grandmother Stockley when she was 75. (I guess I should go get a shot of Botox on that side and even things out - but the idea of having a doctor shoot a poisonous toxin into my face just doesn't cut it somehow.)
Over the next two years, we were plowed into, twice, by two careless drivers, and ended up with a badly damaged automobile and all sorts of back problems. Frank and I were both pretty much out of commission, and that put a strain on our budget. So, no traveling anywhere those two years, either. Then we had to spend time playing 'catch up.' Finally, this year, I thought I was all set to go - but, my car died and a tooth abcessed.
Now, what the heck, you might be wondering, does all that have to do with being homesick? Absolutely nothing. Other than it's all kept me from returning home, and sometimes, life just sucks!
As far as being homesick goes - I miss my friends, and the ocean, the most. I miss Cooke's fried clams and lobster sandwiches at The Four Seas ice cream shop, and the yummy lobster rolls at The Lobster Pot restaurant in Provincetown. I miss the salt air and the cool breezes off the ocean in the summers; beach walks and whale watches. I don't miss the traffic or the high cost of living there. I don't miss the wet, cold winters. I do miss fall in New England, although fall here is very similar. We have the fall leaves that turn beautiful colors, just like in Vermont. 
On "clean air days" - too few of them - we have pretty blue skies and daily views of the Great Smoky Mountains. And, our winters are mild. It does snow here, mostly 6,000 feet up in the mountains; we get very little snow down here in the valley. When we do get an inch of snow, everything shuts down. Schools, shops, restaurants - everything. It's too dangerous for these "rednecks" to drive on the narrow, winding mountain roads. (From what we've experienced, they don't even know how to drive on dry, flat roads.)
Yes, it's pretty here. . .but, it just isn't home; and it never will be.
As Dorothy said, in The Wizard of Oz ". . .there's no place like home."
Maybe in 2006, I will find a way to go home again.
I sure hope so.