I didn’t have much interest in seafood growing up. Occasionally I would eat tuna fish if it was doctored with enough mayonnaise and relish (which, coincidentally, is a preference I still have), but anything else I’d probably have deemed too fishy. I famously eschewed the lobster—prized and highly anticipated by everyone else— at dinner on our annual summer trips to Nantucket in favor of a meal comprised entirely of French fries. Even a generous coating of melted butter couldn’t convince me.

I’ve been homesick throughout my life plenty of times. The first that I can distinctly remember was at a sleepover in lower school, probably around first grade; at bedtime, I dissolved into tears and begged to have my parents pick me up. I wasn’t inherently afraid of being away; in fact, I’ve always relished the adventure of being someplace new, even when it meant setting out entirely on my own. But in all the near and far-flung places I went—summers building trails in New Hampshire or teaching environmental education on Block Island, two months of camp on the shores of Lake Morey in Vermont, a semester studying in South Africa, a string of weeks traipsing around Barcelona and northern Spain, field hockey camps and lacrosse camps and weekends away and even college itself—I’ve always missed home to varying degrees, regardless of how wildly good of a time I was having.