Call Your Parents Today

So I get homesick. Not a crippling or aggressive homesick, just pathetic whimpers of longing on a very consistent basis. And the home for which I’m sick is by no means far. If I’m organized and plan ahead, I can get home for $59 in less than three hours door-to-door, so I recognize that I’m very lucky. I’m not complaining. But with school, clubs, sports and those special weekends I just can’t bear to miss, it’s hard to coordinate.

I miss my parents. It’s not because our relationship has always been perfect, and it’s not that people at CMC aren’t wonderful. But sometimes I just need to be around my dad, whom I always, always know will say “gesundheit” with gusto every time I sneeze. And sometimes I need my mom to get intensely involved in my academic and personal lives, at least just for a minute, and to spend some time worrying as much about my upcoming research paper as I am.

Freshman year, I spent a lot of time thinking I was weird for wanting to talk to my mom and dad on the phone every day. I sat in the now non-existent second floor Phillips study lounge, slightly ashamed at the amount of time I spent with my cracked, data-less, red Blackberry Curve (ancient times, freshmen) pushed up against my ear. Oftentimes, my parents would get frustrated with me for calling them and then “not saying anything." But this is only because there were so many times when I just wanted to hear their voices; I just wanted to feel a connection to three months earlier, when I could have walked into the kitchen and sassed them from there instead. This aspect of the high school lifestyle is hard to let go of. Questions about important issues, such as the best way to get rid of ants without making my room smell, or the proper etiquette for thanking an older family friend for their advice about an internship, suddenly seemed so impersonal. There is something so comfortable to me about asking my mom these questions by screaming them down a flight of stairs and hearing her yell back that she can’t hear me, and then running downstairs in my socks, almost falling, to harass her on her way out the door.

This does not mean that I wasn’t happy to spread my wings and fly briskly from the “nest.” I was excited, and I still love the independence. I love making my own schedule and having space. That being said, call your family today. Here are a few reasons why:

1. That question you were going to type into Google? Take an extra five minutes and call your mom or dad or uncle or aunt and ask them instead. They’ll like to hear from you, and there is no better feeling than letting them know that they can help.

2. You can brag to them without feeling guilty or annoying. No parent or grandparent will ever be bitter to hear about the A you got on your paper or the position or recognition you earned on campus.

3. Heck, you may even be able to FaceTime with your dog.

4. They give the best advice. Whether or not they will be as good as your roommate as decoding your crush’s emoji-filled texts, or know a lot about Labor Economics, they have a few years under their belts, and they know you.

5. More than anything, nobody ever looks back on their young life and says, “Wow, I really regret how often I talked to my family.”

So take that five minutes on the walk from Pitzer lunch to Kravis and call your family. You won't regret it.