You can never go home again,
but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right.
~Maya Angelou
Home. It is my serenity, my escape from harsh reality.
Home is where I am me; I am my most comfortable self. I have always had a home;
never been uncomfortable in a place I lived. I make my space my own. I hang
pictures of memories on the walls, fill the rooms with scents that are pleasing
and cozy and decorate with colors that are soothing to me and inviting to others.
Home is the one place you have away from the world.
My childhood home was a great place. It was a summer camp that had been renovated
to year-round living. We had a wood stove in the winter and no air conditioning
in the summer. My sister and I shared the converted attic for our bedroom. In
an effort to make the house warm in the winter, my Dad went overboard with 12
inches of insulation; great until summer came…to this day I cannot tolerate
being overheated! Nevertheless, the attic kept my sister and I in close proximity,
which we detested then but have since grown to cherish.
Our living room had barn beams holding up the middle of it and, right in the
center of the room, stood an eight-inch square beam. This beam was the bane
of the holiday decorations. Furniture had to be moved around to incorporate
the tree and yet this beam did not afford much wiggle room. In a fit of madness
my sister and I thought was to end in our demise, my mother returned from the
garage, power drill in hand, and began punching holes into the beam. After half
an hour, this ended and she calmly took the tree branches out of their box and
began inserting them into the new holes. She fluffed them out, added the garland,
lights and ornaments and thus began a new look in the living room: one where
no furniture had to move in December.
My mom and dad took a small camp and turned it into a homestead. My dad was
a forklift mechanic and when I was a baby, he purchased the lot behind our house
and later built his garage on it. He worked from home and my mother worked the
office for him. When he was in the garage, and not on the road, my mom would
make us a picnic lunch that I would take to dad. He would then put a pallet
across the forklift tines and we would have a garage picnic. Mom took babysitting
jobs from families in the area who weren't as lucky as I was to have mom or
dad when they got home from school. She had a full house in the summer and we
would all sit at the picnic table under the willow tree to eat our hot dogs
before running off to play in the woods or the stream. My house was a good place
to be.
Now that I have my own place, I try my best to recreate that feeling. When friends
come to play, my daughter, Sierra, is the coolest kid in the bunch. Her mom
lets them have mud fights and eat spaghetti without utensils or even their hands.
She is allowed to play her music loud, sing along and dance till she drops.
Bookshelves line her walls and are full of the stories she immerses herself
in for a bit of tranquility when the world gets tough. Outside, the woods behind
our house have been carved into mowed paths with outcroppings perfect for hiding
in. Sierra has never lacked for places to roam and feel safe in.
Our house is full of warmth. Sierra's schoolwork litters the refrigerator; family
pictures cover one wall of the living room and are on almost every shelf, table
and display case. In the living room alone, I count three books Sierra and I
are "in the process" of reading. Everything is well worn; guests are
never afraid that they may track in dirt or leave a stain on a surface. Candles,
incense and/or oil lamps are lit at some point everyday and they only add to
the scents already floating around. I love to cook and most often garlic and
plenty of enticing fresh herbs are used. My house is a cornucopia of scents
and smells. My sister has told me that the smell of one of my shirts is so comforting,
she loves to wear them just to have me near her. That is the kind of stuff from
which home and families are made.
When I was 20, my parents decided to sell their house and purchase a larger
house, one with apartments in it. My daughter and I moved into one and my sister
took another. Some people think I am crazy to live in a house with my family
but I think they are crazy not to. My parents' nest may be empty, but having
all of us living in the same tree has its benefits: people to talk to when things
get rough, who care enough to worry when you aren't home on time, two writers
ready to proofread college papers, and my daughter never lacks for family and
people who love her.
My home is my escape and while most people go home to get away from the world
, I go home to my world. The "outside", those places to which I must
travel during the day are merely pauses before coming back to what really matters.
Home is the place you never realized you always wanted to be.