Wade Bourne keeps in touch wit his son, James Bourne, during cherubs by phone and email.

I’m used to traveling, to being away from home. I never get homesick, and only sometimes do I pause to think about my friends and family back home. I was ready for cherubs. I was ready for five weeks away from home, with people I didn’t know but would come to love. I was ready to write, learn, research, report and rewrite. I was not ready to go to the hospital, and I was not ready to think that I might be missed back home.

It is no coincidence that it was the Fourth of July. Independence Day and I have been at odds for years, bitter enemies in an annual struggle. I had just separated from my aunt, uncle and cousin after watching the fireworks show. It was a game of tag, a dark night and a low-hanging branch. It ended with something woody in my head.

There are some phone calls, a fast walk and then a meet up with our CA MoMo and head instructor Jenny Hontz, followed by a frightening conversation with a rent-a-cop who urged us to “give it a good yank.” We leave and go talk with some ambulance EMTs.

They want me to leave, but then learn I’m a minor and tell me I’m headed to the hospital. That was a surprise. I start thinking about my parents, not because I wish they were in the ambulance instead of Jenny, but because I was imagining the look on their faces.

I call them from the ambulance, and my dad is calm and wants the facts. My mom is emotional and concerned, a mom. I realize that cherubs aren’t the only ones who miss their families. I don’t get homesick, so it never occurred to me that my parents might get “childsick.” They do call quite a bit, and they sound excited when I call them. Perhaps they are really, truly, childsick.

I realized this as my aunt stepped into the emergency room. My parents had called her; I hadn’t wanted to bother her. My parents were worried, my parents were childsick. What I see now but didn’t realize at the time was that cherubs is a learning experience, both for cherubs and their families. Cherubs get a taste of college life; parents get a taste of having a student in college. Parents get to be childsick.