It’s no secret that House Crazy Sarah longs for her homeland of Canada.
She likes to get her Canada fix by visiting once a year – preferably in the summertime – so she can reconnect with her kin and the land of her earliest dreams and memories.
That just made her think of her favorite song – Helpless by the musically gifted Canuck, Neil Young.
Listening to that song makes House Crazy Sarah so homesick she might squeeze a tear or two out of her lazy left eye. She too, comes from a small town in North Ontario…
She feels particularly helpless and trapped by the current global pandemic which has prevented her from leaving the United States and visiting her home town this summer. It will be a looooong two years before House Crazy Sarah can step foot on Canadian soil again. And this has her feeling really, really, homesick.
Having been gone from her homeland for the better part of two decades, this dull aching of the heart is nothing new to her. She feels it during the holidays – especially the Canadian ones like CANADIAN Thanksgiving, Boxing Day, Family Day, Easter MONDAY, Victorian Day, Indigenous Peoples Day, Civic Day, and Labour Day. Canada has a lot more holidays than the United States. 🙁
House Crazy Sarah feels the sharp pangs whenever someone cracks an “eh” joke or when a South Park episode makes fun of her people with those weird little half-headed characters. She feels the pangs all of the time, sometimes quietly, other times loud and shrill.
A couple years ago, House Crazy Sarah stumbled upon the concept of Hiraeth.
Hiraeth is pronounced “here-eyeth” (roll the “r”) and it is a Welsh word in origin. It has no equivalent in the English language and roughly translates as a sense of homesickness or nostalgia, an earnest longing or desire, or a sense of regret.
*sigh*
House Crazy Sarah feels all of those things, especially lately.
The Urban Dictionary defines it this way:
Hiraeth is a longing for one’s homeland, but it’s not mere homesickness. It’s an expression of the bond one feels with one’s home country when one is away from it.
Yes! House Crazy Sarah has never come close to finding a word that so appropriately sums up the melancholy longing of her home country and her sadness from being so far away.
Here’s to Hiraeth……….. a mystical, primordial word with no tangible meaning, only a feeling.
What do you feel Hiraeth for?
ps….. the photo at the top of the page is of House Crazy Sarah in her home village in Canada approaching the long abandoned lighthouse keeper’s cabin.
~~~
“What do you feel Hiraeth for?”
Well, luckily, we’ve been right here in Brazoria and Harris counties, Texas, since 1831.