For most of my life I’ve felt homeless. I have not belonged - to a place, a person, a career, myself. This is part introvert, part oldest child, part the restless soul in me, and partially the knowledge that I just don’t belong in the culture, the space that I’ve been assigned.
Rigby, so shy, wanting to be wanted, wanting to be special to someone, anyone. Letters to babysitters, needing boyfriends, and then running for Senior class Secretary when I learned we were moving to Orem, so I wouldn’t have to start over. So much pain.
Orem, not fitting in the house, in the bedroom, in the ward, in school.
Rigby, back to home and discovering I no longer fit there.
Back to Orem, Clark newly home from his mission, looking for a home - something more than he had grown up with, two homeless people, an odd match, and yet we fit.
We did our best to create homes - create a family, find our place in Utah, yet both of us drawn to the East - Virginia, where Clark was loved as a successful returned missionary who had changed lives, and I as his bride - and we were accepted.
That southern air, charm, love, wholeness, I gave my heart.
Back to Brigham City to build on our newly built home where we created community, created a place, began careers, yet feeling unsettled and restricted by family and culture, preconceived expectations.
And then a disastrous miracle - we were able to move to the South, fresh on the heels of the space shuttle disaster, home. We were home. We found home in the people, language, landscape. We claimed it as ours, and we were loved and accepted, with no strings attached.
2.5 years of being a family, no one defining us but ourselves. Sharing our world as we desired. Heaven on earth.
Then our own disaster, job loss, back to someone’s home, a temporary situation - always living temporarily. Back to family, religion, and yet there is no going back. My saving grace - education became my home, learning, school, a place I belonged, even though I was so much older than students as well as some of my professors. I found a language and an environment that spoke to and accepted me.
2.5 years, 1.5 years longer than agreed upon, in an area we didn’t want to be, we built a house in a community we wanted/hoped to call home.
And we, with the strength and tenacity and desire of warriors, worked, worked, worked to be home.
Oh how I wished this was the end of my search. Oh how I wanted this home, this place to stick.
I wanted Tyler and Jenna to have what I’d never had - rooms of their own, circles of family - blood and other, freedom to be, space and security.
As I built and created and pursued these communities, I still felt out, different, the other. I tried to fit in, and on the outside I did - mover, shaker, author. creator, activist.
With children adulting, degrees attained, the unsettled’ness came and the restlessness, knowing this wasn’t home.
Maybe nearer aging parents, closer to the university, work, maybe a project, remodel a house, make it a home.
God, save me, this marriage, this family.
With a new degree in my pocket and three weeks on the East Coast, answered, didn’t answer, my prayers, my pleas.
I came home determined to walk away swiftly and cleanly, leave no trace, do no harm. With divorce, transitions, and upheaval and homelessness on the horizon, this was the most perfect storm.
And I was finally going home.
Until I wasn’t.
And then back to my parent’s house, with adult children, and their father in the to-be-remodeled house down the street.
With the man-across-the-street offering strength, experience, commitment, strong love, I stayed. Even when I wanted to run, he stayed strong, and when I wanted to move, he offered to pick up his feet as well.
22 years later, successful careers, children with families and stability and upheaval of their own.
And I know I’m not moving, and my abode is the best I’ve ever had, and my love is the strongest I’ve ever felt, I'm still longing for community, acceptance, a place to call my own.
Roots of trees run broad or deep depending on their source of water. Or - where their community is - some singular and deep, others broadly and widely inter-connected.
Does the single geranium in the pot on my front porch long for the community the abundance of ferns in my back yard has? Does the lone Japanese Maple want others of its kind, or does it thrive because it’s singular? Do the tulips bloom where they are planted, does the strawberry plant wither because it was transplanted, alone?
In all of my attempts to create home, what am I missing?
And then - perhaps I’m overlooking what is right in my hands - peace, hope, calm, validation, safety from the storm is home.
After being away for even a few hours I can walk in the door and know I am home, know, feel, breathe.
And with that searching for, and finding home, I feel another transition coming on.
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| Welcome to My Home |
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