Homesickness or just memory appreciation?

Everyone I talk to about travel has a different take on homesickness and a different experience of it. When I was a kid my family moved 3,000 miles and I was a miserable homesick wreak for a year and took longer than that to really settle in. (Lesson learned: move with a 10 year old at your ow risk). Later on in my teens and 20s I moved around quite often within Canada and didn't really have an issue. The difference I think was moving on my terms and having the ability to own feelings of loneliness or nostalgia and put them somewhere more productive.

When we moved to California in 2007 I thought I'd be homesick because that was a big move. I only remember being homesick a couple of times in the first few weeks. After that I was just too distracted with our new challenges to be looking backwards. There were certainly a lot of hurdles in our first year there and it was also on our first expatriation. The learning curve was sometimes a painful one and I was at times frustrated but I wasn't really homesick.

When we did the move to Singapore we were felt like our time in California was cut short since we'd only had 2.5 years there. Our good-byes were tearful and we miss lots of things from that life. Every so often I get a pang when I see a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge or a familiar bottle of wine shows up at Cold Storage (at 4X the price). I'm convinced it's not really homesickness because it doesn't linger and I don't want to head back. It's just a moment of appreciation for a great adventure we had. So I'm re-branding this particular pang as "Memory Appreciation." The well adjusted sister to homesickness and a much better travel companion.