Homesickness

Nora Ephron had a funny, touching piece in The New Yorker last week about moving from a longtime Upper West Side residence that she never imagined leaving.

Since I've never been short on solipsism, this made me think about a couple of things, including the fate of myself and my friends in this real estate market. My sense is that many of us would love to make New York a long-term home, but it's hard to imagine there was an era in which anyone but the very rich created affordable, unchanging places for themselves here.

That's the usual NY preoccupation, though. This paragraph struck a deeper chord:

Many years ago, when I was in analysis, my therapist used to say, "Love is homesickness." What she meant was that you tend to fall in love with someone who reminds you of one of your parents. This, of course, is one of those things that analysts always say, even though it isn't really true. Just about anyone on the planet is capable of reminding you of something about one of your parents, even if it's only a dimple. But I don't mean to digress. The point I want to make is that love may or may not be homesickness, but homesickness is definitely love.