I am home with these people that I love.
In a few days, I will leave home to go home.
And that is one of the strange things about moving away from a community where you’ve lived for thirty years to start your home in a new one.
Often, when I’m talking to Ivan about Wisconsin folks, I still use phrases like “our church,” even though I am not a member in the Wisconsin church anymore and don’t know many of the people who recently began to attend.
And when I’m talking to my parents about the church Ivan and I attend, I catch myself saying “his church,” even though it’s actually our church.
That will change, of course.
Already, my Wisconsin home looks different to me. I am less connected here and more connected there. This place no longer carries in quite the same way the comfortable glaze of familiarity.
They say that familiarity breeds contempt, but I do not agree. I’ve always loved the places I am familiar with, while the places that are new and strange to me hold me at arm’s length. They hold their entire personality–their stunning beauties and startling uglinesses–out on their face. They are not friendly and companionable in the same way as familiar places, the places where you don’t think about how they look because you are too busy living in them.
My home in Oakland is that place for me now. The comfortable one, the husband, the taken-for-granted. The loved.
And this home is like a dear old friend whom I haven’t seen in many years, and when I do, I am surprised to notice she has changed. Her face looks older, less familiar. It makes me feel a little strange, like maybe I don’t know her at all. So many years between us, so many events and sorrows and surprises and joys. But then we hug and start talking, and so many things are still the same.
A blend of old and new, of missed and changed, of once-loved and always-loved, this is Wisconsin to me. My first day back, I sat on the couch in my parents’ familiar brown living room, filled with homey trinkets and signs, and thought that it was nothing special. Just a country home, too cluttered in places, full of books and food and worn spots in the ceiling.
Still, I will always love this place. When I am here, my heart remembers its childhood, remembers the people who love me just down the road and around the block, and feels at rest.
❤❤❤
I get every last one of these sentiments.
So beautiful, Luci. ❤️
After 22 years of marriage and living 500 miles away from my childhood home, when we turn right into that long graveled Virginia lane, I know I’m home again. Just last Sunday I was talking about “our church” back home because it’s still part of me. Roots go deep….
Love hearing this. Maybe it will always be that way with me and Rusk County, too. Roots do go deep.
I remember chatting with a co-worker from Uganda who talked about his trips home with a mix of joy and frustration – he longed for the country of his birth, but so many years in another place made him a bit of a misfit when he went back – he wasn’t totally Ugandan when he was there, and he wasn’t entirely Canadian when he was here.
It’s a tension that I’ve heard about from my husband, too. He’s Peruvian. And he’s Canadian. Where does he belong?
I feel it, like you do, Lucinda. When I visit my mom and dad, the ticking of their clock, the murmur of their voices, even the Ovaltine they serve at exactly 3 PM, it all makes me feel so HOME.
I’ve changed keys a lot of times since leaving my parents’ place and the constant switching underscored something for me – something I cling to when I miss being home with my parents, or home with my sisters, or home in the city we used to live in, home with friends from dorm… homes here will always be temporary. Home – with a capital H – is waiting for me. When I get there, finally, I will settle and I will belong and there will be no longing for another place.
That’s beautiful, Holly.
I know exactly what you are talking about 😁