I grew up in California in a house that sat atop a hill. Tall
grass and scrub oak blanketed the surrounding hills. The home buzzed with life.
Two kids running hither and yon, a dog and a cat and a bird and various pocket
pets that never seemed to stay around for long. The house was alive with joy
and energy. The sun shone bright overhead and my heart soaked it all in. I
lived there until I was thirteen, at which point my parents divorced. I moved
out with my mom and not long afterward, the house on the hill was packed up and
sold.
Next was a series of rented apartments that felt like way
stations. My mom drifted from place to place, trying on new versions of herself,
and I tagged along behind her. This went on until I was on the cusp of
adulthood. I learned to hold my breath, to not put down roots. It was a lesson
in the impermanence of life.
As long as I was unmoored, I decided, I would travel. I
worked temporary jobs until I had enough money to travel, then I took off on
some new adventure. I kept my possessions few and lived lightly. I traveled all
over the country, and eventually across the ocean. I spent six months traipsing
across Australia, going deep into the red interior. I found the land to be
inescapably beautiful. I felt at peace there, my soul taking root in the
ancient red land. This foreign yet familiar place redefined for me the meaning of
home.
In my mid-twenties, I moved to Kansas to be near my mom. I
decided to go back to school. I rented an apartment in an old Victorian house
and settled in to the rhythm and beat of campus life. It was my first home that
was mine alone, a place of blossoming. I filled it with books and travel
mementos and quilt fabrics. Light streamed in through the big front window, where my cats
perched on the sill, lazily twitching their tails. It was a place of joy and
friendship, of creativity and freedom. The stuff of creation. At the end of my
first year at school, within the span of a handful of months, my mom was
diagnosed with cancer and died. I was bereft. But I stayed on three more years in my newly-made
home, and it soothed my broken heart.
My next home was on an island in the Pacific Northwest. I was
drawn there by the beauty and solitude, but hadn’t considered what it would
feel like to be so alone. I imagined I would make friends, as I always had, but
this proved a challenge. It never occurred to me that it might be difficult to
meet kindred souls on a remote, rural island. I felt like I lived inside the
pages of National Geographic. Bald eagles soared overhead and nested in the
tall trees overlooking the strait. Orcas and grey whales breached and spouted.
The cold sea lapped the shore. At night I could hear the mournful cry of
foghorns and feel the vibrations from the cargo ships cruising silently through
the dark passage. It was hauntingly beautiful, but the trees sucked up all the light
and my heart grew lonely.
I returned to Kansas and moved into another Victorian-era
home. The house was old and friendly and weathered. The dining room floor
slanted downward and I had to duck to enter my bedroom closet. I painted the
kitchen yellow and filled the house with quirky second-hand furniture. The
house was light and hopeful, like my last home in Kansas, but I had carried
with me some of the sadness from the island and it settled into the home. I
stayed there for two years, feeling about, looking for a path.
Next came the house in the suburbs. I had never wanted to
live in the suburbs - beige neighborhoods filled with beige cookie-cutter
houses – but I let him choose the house. Life had taught me to bend with the
wind, but sometimes I bent too far. I came to the house reluctantly, one
eyebrow raised. My travel photos and quilts seemed out of place within its
newly constructed walls. It felt like someone else’s home. Nevertheless, it was
a place that birthed and grew children. A place where cookies were baked and
faces cleaned and floors swept again and again. The house, benign and
accommodating, nurtured my kids through childhood and sent them off to school. The
seasons recycled themselves and life was pleasant enough.
But then there was the summer when everything fell apart.
When violence cut like a knife through our family. His lawyer demanded the
house and I, frightened and somewhat relieved, made preparations to leave. I
was surprised, however, when the house held fast to us. The horror of that
period drew out for another three years and all that time we stayed in the
house. She held us there through the longest night, cupped in her hand,
cushioning us from a series of sucker punches.
When the storm passed and we emerged, shell-shocked yet
intact, I regarded the house with a newfound appreciation. I had never seen the
loyalty and strength hidden beneath her beige exterior. This place I had leaned
away from all those years.
She holds us now with an open palm, like a good Samaritan
setting free a once-wounded bird. She wills us to take flight. I can feel her
folding up our family’s history, like a laundered sheet, tucking it into a trunk
for shipping. She is making preparations for a new family and some days I can
almost hear the laughter of someone else’s children running down her hallways,
strewing crumbs across her floors and gathering the oversized leaves from her
yard.
When I lie quietly at night, I can feel our next house
beckoning to us. I catch the fresh scent of towels still crisp from the clothes
line. I hear the wind in the trees outside and the murmurs of my children in
the next room. I feel the passage of time, like Fortuna’s wheel, carrying us
forward towards the next new place, the framework of a home waiting for us to write
our story into its walls.
Wow! I'm in awe of your beautiful writing. Seamless and poignant. I hung on every word. And wow - the island! - I want you to tell me more about that one day!
ReplyDeleteSomeday we will sit down over coffee and I will tell you all about the island. It was magnificent and so much more than I could fit in a paragraph. And you will tell me all about the places you've called home, which I know are exotic and beautiful. Thank you for your beautiful words. x
DeleteA good home is like a lighthouse... it's light draws us in even from far away when we are feeling lost and tired.
ReplyDeleteThat's beautiful, Steve. I'm looking for the beam through the fog right now. Hope to find it soon!
DeleteSending you a beam from the Blue Mountains. ;) Hope you find your new home (or it finds you) soon. X
ReplyDeleteOh, I so love the Blue Mountains. How lucky you are to live there! x
DeleteWow, that is just such beautiful prose. Knew you had it in you, but am blown away nonetheless!
ReplyDeleteLCM x
Aw, thanks S. xo
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