I just finished reading Home by Marilynne Robinson. It was a closer look at some of the people in Gilead. A bit darker than Gilead (not as dark as Housekeeping, though) but just as insightful. Robinson is an amazing writer.
The kids and I saw footprints in the snow one morning before school. We hadn’t seen any animals around, so it was a mystery how they got there. We’ve had various critters around — deer, skunk, raccoon. It would be interesting to figure out what had wandered around our house in the snow.
After school, we went out to track the prints. They stopped with tire tracks. Did Pappa have an animal in his pickup? We didn’t think so. They went a little ways past the garage but not all the way down the driveway. They stopped before the snow in the yard. We saw them along the side of the house, though, to the door into the garage. I remembered feeling horrible for the delivery guy who had to tromp through the snow I hadn’t had time to clear yet. Aha! The delivery guy. He must have had a dog. Mystery solved.
I don’t get Wanda Sykes.
I’m surprised at how much I enjoy The Deep End.
Who wouldn’t want an Italian villa?
Best thing about watching OL figure skating? Scott Hamilton.
My kids think I’m cool because I once sat next to a real princess on a plane.
Magpie Musing makes me think. She also makes me happy. She’s inspired me (again), this time to think about what makes me happy. Here’s a list.
“Nothing is more human than a book.” ~ Marilynne Robinson, The Paris Review, Issue 186, Fall 2008.
Irony
Writing to my children in a beautiful Italian-made leather-bound journal
that I bought with a gift certificate
I got several birthdays ago
from someone who told me
just before my last birthday
that I don’t deserve my children.
Just when you think people don’t know you,
they prove they know
your soft spots
all too well
because those are the best places
to hit
when you want to hurt someone.
Take an old gal like me
who suffered through
agonizing years
of infertility.
Call her a bad mother.
Call her a bad wife for good measure.
Then watch her pick up the pieces of her heart
and
walk away.
Never, under any circumstances, ever, say, “You know? We’ve gotten so much snow, we can’t possibly get more … can we?” Because when you do? You will.
Oops. How’d that get in there?
There’s a snow fence under there.
See?
Every time you build a snow fort for the kids?
The next day, a blizzard will blow through and close it up. Every. Damn. Time.
This is my grandparents’ old farm place, where my father grew up. They’re no longer alive, and that house no longer exists. Only the shadows of memories do.
I’m reading Home by Marilynne Robinson, and it’s got me thinking.
I don’t have a home. Not in the physical sense of having a house where I grew up, in a town where my parents still live and a place I can go back to and visit. I don’t even know if any of the houses we lived in is still standing.
When I was growing up, my family moved every year or two. I went to 10 schools in 12 years, including three high schools. I was an outsider then, and I’m an outsider now.
I used to tell myself I could go “home” when I visited my grandparents. Even though I lived there for a couple of years when I was growing up, it was my father’s hometown, not mine. He grew up there, I didn’t. Besides, one of those years holds many, many painful memories for me, and it was another nail in the coffin for any desire I might have to be around those who practice organized religion. It never quite made sense to me that my kind, sweet and generous grandmother came from the same place as so many people who were so damn mean and purposefully blind to the suffering of a child.
People seem to be profoundly disposed toward religion, yet they’re not terribly good at it. (Marilynne Robinson in an interview by Sarah Fay in The Paris Review, “The Art of Fiction No. 198,” Issue 186, Fall 2008.)
I was born in Omaha but lived there briefly. It’s not my home.
I sometimes list Lincoln as my hometown. It’s where I went to college, but I didn’t grow up there. It’s not my home either.
My husband’s home in Norway isn’t where I grew up, but I might as well claim it after almost 20 years of “going home” to visit. The first time I set foot in that home, I was welcomed with open arms, just as I have been every time I’ve returned. Even though I didn’t grow up there, I always have the feeling of being home when I’m there. Like I belong. Like I’m welcome. Like I’m family. I always appreciated that, but I didn’t realize how rare and precious it was until now.
As an outsider, I could hang out along the edge of one group or another, but I couldn’t actually belong. I might be invited inside, but there would be a wall I could never get past.
So I learned to study people. I could never be one of them, but I could learn everything I could about them and try to understand them, whether it was a particular school crowd, a group of friends or even my own family. Which is why journalism was a perfect fit for me. It’s one place I belong. Even though it’s one of the things about me that’s been held up for ridicule and mockery, I hold on as if it’s a lifeboat in a stormy sea. Because, for me, it is.
My father is dead. My mother lives in a house I’ve never lived in. My three brothers live here, although only one of them “grew up” here. I had never lived in Iowa until moving here less than two years ago. And here I was, looking for a sense of “home.”
What I found was an illusion, and I feel foolish for having believed in it for so many years. Iowa isn’t known for its earthquakes, but what I’ve found here has shaken my entire foundation. It’s made me question everything.
So she prayed, Lord, give me patience. She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord, my brother treats me like a hostile stranger, my father seems to have put me aside, I feel I have no place here in what I thought would be my refuge, I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse. But it cost her tears to think her situation might actually be that desolate, so she prayed again for patience, for tact, for understanding — for every virtue that might keep her safe from conflicts that would be sure to leave her wounded, every virtue that might at least help her preserve an appearance of dignity, for heaven’s sake. (Home, p. 69)
It’s been painful, but I have realized some very important things. While I initially regretted everything — coming here, every moment I spent, every word I said, every piece of myself I shared — I now see that it could have taken decades more to shatter this illusion. A person can’t learn if she doesn’t make mistakes, and I’ve learned a lot.
I realized I was spending so much time learning about everyone else and trying to understand everyone else that I was spending too little time understanding myself. I realize that I had several unresolved issues that I held at arm’s length for many years. I did this so I could believe the illusion. But the issues were there, and they were like poison. Trying to ignore them doesn’t solve them. Dealing with them does.
I realize that people who don’t love themselves have no capacity to love others. I realize that people who harbor resentments cannot accept what is given to them in the spirit of kindness and generosity. I realize that if people see only those things they hate or resent in others, they cannot believe in the goodness or worth of others. I realize that you can’t change what others believe about you or anything else. You can only change yourself.
People are frightened of themselves. It’s like Freud saying that the best thing is to have no sensation at all, as if we’re supposed to live painlessly and unconsciously in the world. I have a much different view. The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege. (Marilynne Robinson in an interview by Sarah Fay in The Paris Review, “The Art of Fiction No. 198,” Issue 186, Fall 2008.)
Home isn’t always a place, nor does it always reside in the people you think it should. Sometimes it’s the family you create with someone you choose to be with no matter where you are.
This?
Is my home.
And, I tell you what. There’s no place like home.
9/2011
