WHAT IS HOME?
MAY 16, 2023
It is the morning of May 16, 2023, when we celebrate our son's second birthday. I started this letter two weeks ago, intending to finish it and send it out long ago. As is indicative of our lives this past year, I've had to put this down and pick it back up several times in the last couple of weeks. May is quite a month—we celebrate my dad's birthday, Mother's Day, now Dillon's birthday, and our wedding anniversary at the end of the month. All of these days are symbolic when considering the concept of home.
My dad turned 71 this year, opting for a quiet family dinner at the new Texas Roadhouse that just opened up near their home. It's hard not to think about the passing of time when you face the reality that your parents are aging. Every moment is a gift. On Sunday, I celebrated my first Mother's Day with two children. I still can't believe I'm typing that. I became a mom later in life, spending years wondering if tiny footsteps, milestones, and the unending joy and epic failures of parenthood would ever be a reality. Mother's Day reminds me how much a woman can carry and still manage to function. We carry the fullness of life — joy, birth, loss, grief, lists, family, friends, the regret of yesterday, and the hope of tomorrow. Whether we ever marry or have children, we build our homes brick by brick, joy by joy, sorrow by sorrow.
My children will be downstairs in a few minutes, and we will begin our day. The one turning two will likely not understand what a birthday is and won't carry memories of this day. The six-year-old, though, she knows. She knows that birthdays here mean donuts in the morning and cake at night. She knows the feeling of anticipation when she sees gifts wrapped. She loves tearing into the paper and, soon after, into the boxes. She still loves toys more than clothes, but I know someday that will change. Her sense of home has changed since her brother has come to be with us, and much of our days have been spent showing her and telling her that there is enough love for the both of you. Her brother has learned quickly that she is hysterical. She has learned that he is kind of needy, but I can tell in more moments than she would like to admit that he is growing on her too.
MAY 3, 2023
Speaking of building a home, I began this letter two weeks ago. Here is what I wrote.
I am somewhere near the end of unpacking boxes for the sixth time in six years. Last night I tucked my daughter and son into bed, and my mind wandered. Our daughter, who we adopted at birth, has been with us for all six moves. As for our son, this is his first move. We are in the process of finalizing his adoption, and he has been with us for just three short months. He will be two this month, and though we have some information about his life before being in our home, much of it is unknown and left to our speculation.
As I asked myself what home is, I began to wonder what it is to them. The two of them aren't related by blood, and they don't share familial lines or come from the same place. They have vastly different stories and came to us through different circumstances. That thought took me to my own parents, who had just left from helping us move a couple of hours ago. Around a year ago, they left their home of seventy years in Oregon to move to Tennessee. In a matter of five minutes, I scanned memories of my childhood home and then made the journey to the present.
I suppose the most common answer when somebody asks where your home is you name a city or region. I spent the first twenty years of my life in the same place—a three-bedroom house on Hope Street in a small town called Klamath Falls, just twenty minutes over the border of California. My house was so familiar it was almost a part of me, as was the town I grew up in, and safe to say you could expand that knowing to the region I grew up in.
Since leaving my home in Oregon at age 20, I have moved more times than I can count on two hands. Oregon, California, Tennessee, Texas, California, and back to Tennessee, where I have spent a combined 16 years. Growing up, one family tradition was listening to the Alabama Christmas album while we opened presents on Christmas morning. "Another tender Tennessee Christmas, the only Christmas for me." I can remember listening to that song as a kid and thinking Tennessee was a far-off land. I used to wonder what Tennessee was like. Now, it's as in my bones as anything, I suppose. And it's true; there is a certain tenderness to Christmas here. Tennessee is no longer a far-off land; Tennessee is now, and for the foreseeable future, my home.
Our daughter was born in Phoenix, AZ, but she has only known living in Tennessee. Even still, you ask her where she is from, and she will gladly proclaim that she is from Arizona. To be clear, she couldn't tell you a thing about Arizona, at least beyond what we share with her and from pictures we have of visiting when she was too young to remember. Even still, she clings to something left there. The truth is, regardless if she grasps that or not, as much of her story lies in that home as it does in ours. Is home our origin, or is it the places we spend being formed? Is it nature or nurture? Is home biology, circumstance, or a chosen path? I'm not sure I can answer that for my children, but I can do my best to reflect on that for myself.
Home for me is Oregon and Tennessee—the bookends of a library of discovery marked by people, places, and circumstances. I left home at twenty with no idea what the rest of the world had to offer. The truth is, I was more comfortable in my hometown than I would have known to tell you at the time. There I was known for things that shaped my identity. I didn't have to tell people who I was; I had a history of them knowing me. The best I can tell is that I was known as a pretty good kid with a reputation for being kind to everyone. I was an athlete, good enough to play in college. Inside that title, I found my worth. Home was synonymous with a place and a beautiful one at that. It was the smell of pines, the high desert terrain, cold winters, perfect summers, and the always cool breeze off the lake. It was my house on Hope Street and in the people who knew me.
Home now is lush green, hot, and humid summers. It's where the fireflies dance in June and July. The thunderstorms and sometimes tornadoes remind me of the beauty, majesty, and, every once in a while, destruction of nature. It is brown and mild, dare I say, tender winters. It is where in the middle of summer, you walk out your front door into a wall of humidity that, by the beginning of September, can feel relentless. I suppose it's home now for no other reason than I have acclimated to the climate here. Even still, I long for Oregon in July. There may be no better summer on the planet than the one found in the Pacific Northwest, although now summers are synonymous with raging forest fires. It's a reminder that it's not my home or my permanent one, anyway.
There have been times I have been homesick, but for what? I don't always know. The best I can tell is a longing to hold onto what is good, beautiful, and true and a desire for something even greater. It may be mild summers, the simplicity of the house on Hope, or just for being known because you have years of history. It might be the smell of a home-cooked meal or the house we built a couple of years ago that felt like us. Those were two good years despite living through the pandemic. They told us to stay home that year, which became one of the best years we have ever had. I feel guilty saying that, but home was synonymous with shalom for us that year. It was our tiny postage stamp that we, as a family, explored every square inch of. We woke up with mostly the same plan, and over time we found the tiniest of joys in hunting for rocks and sitting on the back porch eating dinner.
Is home a knowing? A familiarity? Is it laughter? Or tiny footsteps in the morning? Is it your neighbors or the trail you run each day? Is it the smell of the pines or the fireflies or years of history or biology, or the four walls you call a house? Is it safety and security or wanting your own bed or mealtime around the table? Is it unfulfilled desire for something beyond? Is it your story before you can remember it? Is it the place you were born or where you were brought up? Is it made up of people who know you and still call you beloved even in the dark corners? Is it becoming a mother or a father? Is it the place where you are found and yet always becoming? Is it a harsh winter or a tender one? Will we ever truly be at home on this earth? I tend to think not, but surely that is what I attempt to create.
One week after bringing our son home, he needed a minor surgery, which felt major given the circumstances. We were still, for all intents and purposes, strangers. We had all been going on a week of sleepless nights, and days prior, we had been gathering paperwork confirming to the hospital that we were temporarily allowed to make medical decisions for this little boy who looks nothing like us.
It was Valentine's Day. We woke him at five in the morning and headed for the hospital. We were questioned more than once on who we were to him. In technical terms, we were legal guardians, but I had given him my heart in just one short week. Given his lengthy hospital stay in January, we were reminded in the waiting room that this routine surgery was more complicated. Armed with that information, we sent him off, and we waited.
The moment we were told he was out and in recovery, Chad and I let out a sigh of relief that looked like tears streaming down our faces. As we entered the hall of recovery rooms, we recognized his cry. It took just a week to know that one signaled visceral discomfort. We reached his curtain, found his tiny body hooked to a machine, and saw his face that matched his cry. The nurse invited me to lie next to him on the skinny hospital bed. As I held him in my arms, I glanced at Chad, who had a look on his face I wasn't sure to make of. Is everything ok, I asked. He nodded. Later he told me that the minute they put him in my arms, his heart rate dropped 40 beats/minute. I don't pretend to know what is going on in his head. But, I wonder at that moment, in a hospital hall, if my arms felt like home to him. It wasn't the place, and it certainly wasn't the circumstances. Far as I can tell, it was my arms. At that moment, comfort said, "You're safe; you are home."
JUNE 2, 2023
On Wednesday, I woke my daughter early in the morning, put her in the car, and headed south for a five-hour drive to Columbus, Georgia. My alma mater, the softball team I played for in college, had made it to the final round in the College Softball World Series. I spent two years playing with a group of girls who shared a love for the game and each other. We are old enough now for one of the girls I played with to have a couple of daughters on this team. With the game being within driving distance, this was a chance to watch a game and show my daughter a little piece of what was home to me. It's wild to see somebody twenty years later. It's mind-bending to look down on that field from the stands and realize you are way more comfortable in the game than you are out of it.
At one point, my daughter grew bored of sitting in the stands, so we relocated to the bleachers, where there was plenty of room to roam. I sat on the top row, high above the field, and for a few minutes, scanned back to that time in my life. Those were two good years, a time when I was a part of something bigger than myself—a time when a group of people was put together by a coach who recruited us all with a common goal of building something special became something that felt like home. I looked down on that field full of twenty-somethings with a couple of decades ahead of them that I have already lived. I had a moment of wanting to be back there.
We lost the game, but I'm grateful for those 36 hours. After the game, I was able to talk to the coach. I told him I played for the team twenty years ago, and we spoke briefly about my coach, Danny Miles. We both agreed he is a legend, and to have been under his wing was an honor. He then thanked me for being a part of a stretch of teams that laid the foundation for this program to be put on the map nationally. I had never thought about it that way, but it's true. To think that I was a part of something that put my first home on the map is humbling. Win or lose; those few hours allowed me a soft place to land. Home is a memory, and as I looked at my daughter waving her blue Pom Poms, home is now a little hand to hold. It is past, and it is present, and it is a lot of things in between.
So, what is home? It's a little something like this. It is a place and people, board and batten, sounds of laughter, the smell of Sunday dinner, the mountains and the pines, the green hills and Tennessee skies, the thunderstorms, the fireflies, and tender winters. It is the people who knew us back then and the ones who know us now. It is what we have built, left behind, and woke up to before you read this letter. But I think true home is somewhere in between. It lies beyond what we can name. It's longing, belonging, and the eternal search for those things until we find ourselves by streams of living water.
Good Lord, Julie. That bit about Dillon in the hospital. Didn't expect to be choking back tears on this Monday morning. Beautiful. I'm so glad you're in the world.
Whew, this is beautiful.