Homesick/Sick at Home

I don’t like being sick in someone else’s space. I’d rather be home and in my own bed, on my own couch through the day, eating my own food and taking the medicines I had made earlier in the summer season.
I was sitting in my sister Kathy’s room, shivering in the air conditioning, my forehead hot, my throat sore. I still had ten days left of a summer vacation. I knew when I walked out of her bedroom (the warmest room in the house), the temperature would be at least ten to twenty degrees cooler, so I wrapped myself in a blanket and stayed curled up on her bed.
As I lay there, I thought about my options. My feverish brain flitted back and forth between several, over and over.
Finally, I got up from the bed, got my wallet out of my day pack in the guest bedroom, and went to the phone. Before I picked it up to call the airlines, I told Kathy of my plan. I could see the disappointment all over her face, yet she nodded her understanding.
I called the airlines, changed my flight to the next day and put the charges on my credit card. I called the car rental and told them I was bringing the car back in an hour and canceling the ten-day contract.
Then I called the friends I had planned to see over the next week and a half, listening to their dismay. It had been three years since I had been back to that part of Jersey to those close old friends.
I returned to Kathy’s bedroom, wrapped myself back into the blanket and dreamt of the organic chicken soup in my freezer at home and the Echinacea I had grown and made into a tincture several months before. I was so ready to go home.
Jyoti