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February 12, 2010 | Iowa
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.
February 12th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Amen! Lovely, painful post. I’m glad you’ve made your home and know how to appreciate it. Need to get that book. I’m reading Eileen Goudge’s One Last Dance at the moment, and it has a lot of similar themes…tho I’m guessing in a more superficial manner. Thanx for sharing. And happy heart day with your loves!
February 12th, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Thank you, Cyndi. Thank you so much! Happy Valentine’s Day to your beautiful family!
February 13th, 2010 at 12:28 am
Thanks for the article, Becky. Hurts me to hear you articulate your pain so eloquently. Wish I were so articulate… trying to come up with the words to say that, you have brightened the lives of so many of us whom you’ve encountered along the way (we ‘thought’ we were letting you inside). Glad you have found your gift and your home.
February 13th, 2010 at 5:00 am
Wow. Brave, honest and fabulous! Wow. Life can really suck sometimes. Being able to face the raw truth, learn from it and create something beautiful beyond its confines is a real gift, Becky. Thanks for having the guts to put it out there and tell it like it is. It is the true measure of a writer.
February 13th, 2010 at 11:13 am
Oh, Dave, thank you for that.
February 13th, 2010 at 11:14 am
Thanks, Deb. That’s an honor, coming from you. ;)
February 13th, 2010 at 11:21 am
Well done. Having moved a lot when I was a kid, and always living in apartments, my sense of home always centered on my grandparents’ place. But really, it was about the feeling of being welcomed. My grandparents have passed away, my dad too, and my mom is in a nursing home. Now home means my wife and daughter, any place we are together.
February 13th, 2010 at 12:51 pm
You HAVE learned a lot, and that is huge. The world is full of people who complain endlessly about being misunderstood or unappreciated; it takes guts to look at the situation for what it is and decide what’s good and what’s bad, and what you need to do about it.
Things will not always be this painful, Beckers. Other people can get insights and acquire some guts, too. This may not be forever. The good part is knowing that whether it is or not, you’ll be okay.
Besides, you’ve always been WAY more than okay in my book.
February 13th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
p.s. The house I lived in for my whole childhood has been bulldozed for a warehouse. The house my parents lived in for the next 20-odd years has been bulldozed for an ugly subdivision. All my trees are gone. I miss those trees every day.\
Maybe instead of “you can’t go home again,” the saying should be “If you COULD go home again, you wouldn’t want to.” Sigh….
February 13th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Thanks, Charlie, for understanding.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
Thanks for the words of wisdom, Tracy. It’s so weird to have memories of places that no longer exist, isn’t it?
February 13th, 2010 at 8:32 pm
I knew ya had it in ya. All of it. In Judaism we call the act of making people feel welcome as being “haymische” pronounced hay- mish- uh. It means “homey” by the way of actions to put others at ease and create a feeling of belonging. There should be no outsider.
So you’ll create a haymishe environment for those who come to you and in time, they will also learn what you have learned. : )
February 13th, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Thanks, homey, Devra. [making mommy-gang signs]
February 15th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Beautifully written. But who has mocked you for being a journalist? Not I nor anyone with a lick of sense.
February 28th, 2010 at 10:00 pm
It used to pain me also every time I heard that you were moving again. I always hoped that your family would find a place to call home. I’m so
happy for you that you have such a beautiful home (in spite of the snow) and a beautiful
family and that you have discovered the real meaning of home.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:55 am
I’m catching up on things today, including reading your blog.
Dang. Lots of things make lots of sense now.
So, now that your move to Iowa has served its (utterly painful) purpose, come back home to Florida. And chop chop, would ya’?
April 24th, 2010 at 6:03 am
[...] is one of the least judgmental things I’ve heard in the last couple of years, and it’s a subject I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, “What is home? My favorite definition is ‘a safe place,’ a place where one is [...]