Letter 06
Re: Call Home, But Know What Calling Costs
Dear Immigrant,
Call home. Call regularly. The people who love you need to hear your voice and you need to hear theirs. The technology that makes this free or nearly free is one of the genuine improvements of the present over the immigration of previous generations, and you should use it.
But know what calling home costs in the ways that are not measured in data charges.
Every call home is a reminder of the distance. You will hear your mother's voice and know that you cannot reach her in less than a day of travel. You will hear about an event — a birth, an illness, a celebration — that happened without you. You will hang up the phone and be alone in a room in a city far from everyone you love, and the call will have been good and the silence after it will be sharp.
Calling home can also make it harder to build the new life. The people at home will miss you and some of them will not know how to support you without pulling at you — without expressing needs that you cannot meet from where you are, without describing problems that you cannot solve, without communicating in small and large ways that your absence is being felt. This is love. It is also weight. You will have to learn how to receive it without being pulled back in ways that make it harder to build forward.
Call home. Set a regular time rather than calling whenever the homesickness peaks — a regular schedule gives the calls structure and keeps them from becoming purely emotional. Ask about the ordinary things, not just the crises. Ordinary life is what you miss, not only the emergencies.
The calls are a lifeline in both directions. Tend them carefully.
From someone who called home every Sunday for years,
A former immigrant
dearimmigrant.com