Not Home...?

“What would I do if I were home…?”  Frantically, I’m running backwards to North Orange County, California, backwards to home.  But, my home isn’t mine.  It’s safely in the hands of others.  I made it for them.  I painted and floored and edited and changed all of it so they would like it.  And they do.  They love it.  They feel like it is their home.  So, I accepted their money and walked away.  But now… now that I’m not home… I’m aimless, project-less, and family-less.  I’ve lost my “go to it-ness.”  I’m reaching and wondering and analyzing.  My familiar touch points are not here.  I feel a need to make new ones.  So, I wonder, “What would I do if I were home?”

It’s a rainy, cold day here in Plano, Texas.  The weather app says it’s snowing, but my front porch says it’s raining.  The temperature is just above freezing.  I know that because the ice on my driveway is now slush.  For the last two days, I’ve stayed inside and enjoyed watching the Food Network and HGTV.  It’s not very often, after all, that I can justify two full days of watching my “classes” on life skills.  But, my body is starting to rebel.  I need to be outside.  I need to walk somewhere familiar.  Or go to my beach.  Or go to my aqua fitness class and see my friends.  Or sit in my hot tub with my sister-in-law. 

I need to see my sister.  I need to watch a ball game with my brother.  I need to host our family dinner.  I need to talk to my son face-to-bearded-face.  I need to hear him play the guitar and sing and tell me about his students and his classes.  I need to sit by my family in church.  I need to be in a time zone where I can talk with my sons in Brasil and Hawaii without either of them being sleepy.  I need my daughter to come home for a visit where she can see her friends and my friends and we all laugh and hug and talk and eat.  I need to do all of the things I did when I was home.

The conundrum is that I AM home.  This Plano Texas condominium is home.  It’s my real home, where I really live and sleep and eat and walk and swim and go to church and talk with my family and text my friends.  This is where I walk while it becomes familiar.  This is where I find my new beach, or lake shore.  This is where I go to my new aqua fitness class and see my new friends.  This is where I need to install a new whirlpool tub and invite my husband to join me.  This is where I make bread.  This is where I write.  This is where I teach.  This is where I learn.  This is where I do things I couldn’t or didn’t do anywhere else.

And yet… it’s not home-home.  For years, I thought my home-home was where I was born.  But, it wasn’t and isn’t.  I started to wonder if my idea of home is where I spent my childhood.  But, we moved a number of times, so there wasn’t just one place to call home.  Then I thought it was where I raised my children.  And, even though I lived and loved there for 25 years, it isn’t home now because they’ve grown and I’ve moved on.  So where does this idea of home come from?  Will I ever really be home-home?

Maybe not.  Maybe I just have to realize that my sense of home-home is unsupported in this world.  I may not ever live around the corner from all of my kids and their families and my siblings and their families and my friends and their families.  I may not ever have everyone I love all together at the same dinner table in the same room.  Ever.  Maybe my sense of home-home is all in my head.  And my heart.  Maybe that’s all any of us ever really get – a head-heart idea of what home is and who is there and how it looks and feels.  It seems to me that home should include my parents.  And their parents.  And maybe even their parents.  It should certainly include my grandchildren, but it can’t include their mother even though I love her because she is their mother, and I'm an ex.  I want to include my step-grandchildren because I love them and I love their mother and of course I need my son with me.  But what about those children’s dad?  I don’t even know him.  How could he be part of my home?

A long time ago I stitched a sampler, which is very unusual for me.  I’m far too impatient to stitch and sew.  But this one mattered because of the sentiment.  It hung on the wall of my children’s home while they grew up. When we moved, I packed it away with all of the ancestral photos that hung on my "genealogy wall."  While on a quest to discover how to feel "at home," I went searching for it the other day.  There it was, surrounded by Bradys and Winters and Delquatros and Petersens and Skinners and Sharps.  It says, “Home is where you can be silent… and still be heard… where you can ask …and find out who you are… where you can share… and love… and grow…

Whoever wrote that sentiment has a much firmer grasp on “home” than I do.  As I read the sampler, I remember my mom and dad making each of those lines come true for me and my sibs.  With concerted effort, I worked to make those things true for my kids.  My oldest son and his wonderful wife are making all of that true for all of their kids.  Maybe that’s the essence of home – making “home” work for the coming generation, so they bring their home with them wherever they are or may go.  Maybe I’m not home because I’ve been fuzzy about what home is.  Maybe it’s not faces at the table.  Maybe it’s faces in my heart.  Maybe in my silence those who are home with me still hear me, no matter where we are.  Maybe it’s all the sharing and loving and growing that has taken place for generations.  Maybe it’s knowing that I can ask and they will help me find out who I am.  Maybe not being home has enlarged my perspective of home.  Maybe I’ve been home all along.

The Beach

 In the summer of 1969, I was 16 years old.  I had my driver’s license and access to my dad’s ice blue 1960 Oldsmobile 88.  The sweltering summer days in inland Orange County demanded a cool retreat, so my friends piled into my car with towels, baby oil, and just enough cash for an order of tortilla strips, and we took off down Beach Blvd. to our spot at Huntington Beach, state side, lifeguard station #15.

 The groovy music from KRLA filled the car and spilled over onto the highway as we sang at the top of our lungs to an eclectic mix the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Doors, and John Denver.  We’d never heard of anyone having hearing loss from constant exposure to loud rock music, so our ears rang as our lungs filled with smog and our nostrils drew in grease and tar from the busy highway.  The air conditioning didn’t work, so our lithe, young bodies perspired freely, mixing the scent of our Bonnie Bell skin care lotion with the highway perfume.

Everybody in southern California surfed.  At least that’s what it seemed like.  However, neither my friends nor I could afford a surf board.  Besides, I couldn’t surf because I couldn’t see the sets.  I had 20:3500 vision and wore contact lenses to correct it, but I couldn’t wear my lenses at the beach because the onshore breeze would blow them out of my eyes.  I wore glasses to drive, but wouldn’t be caught dead wearing glasses at the beach.  As soon as I parked the car, my friends sprung themselves from the four doors of our boss chariot, and I tucked my glasses into my beach bag.  Suddenly, the world became an impressionist’s painting with color but no lines.  The fuzzy interpretation of my surroundings freed me of conformity and my senses were immediately heightened.  I lingered behind my friends, caught in a frenzy of perceptions.   The air was clean and crisp.  It almost hurt to breathe.  The fragrance of salt and sea filled my sinus cavities and I was drawn to the tantalizing source.  I loved sensing the ocean.  I felt its beckoning waves drawing me closer.

As I submerged myself in the foam and brine, the heat melted into a liquid, throbbing coolness.  My long, sun-streaked hair glistened like seaweed on the fleeting lather as it floated away from my shoulders.  My strong, muscled arms propelled me smoothly into deeper water as I dodged the breaking waves by diving under them.  I joined my friends in the crazy catch-a-wave game of body surfing, using ourselves as our surf board and riding the wave to the beach.  Then, pulling ourselves out of the tugging water, we turned again to the sumptuous allure of immersion.

Finally, completely spent, I plodded through the ankle-snappers and the soggy silt to the dry, deliciously warm sand by my towel.  I flopped down, allowing the beach to engulf me just as the water had.  The briny taste of the sea floated down my throat as the saline spray dribbled from my eyelashes and I tilted my chin upward toward the warmth of the sun.  My sandy water-bed surrounded me as the pulsing, rhythmic surf fused with the call of the gulls and the heady scent of baby oil and fried tortillas blended into a whirling harmony of bliss and passage and peace.