Settling In and Finding Home

A few years ago, Tim, my life partner, and I bought a house in a funny little suburban neighborhood not many miles south of Providence. It is close enough to the water that we have a "water view" from the second floor (which did not exist before we moved in) which can be seen when the leaves of the trees disappear and you know exactly where to look through the cluster of houses along the shore. It's a bungalow (small) style house, built in the 1930's. Our neighborhood was a vacation community that attracted folks from Connecticut and New York. There is a crumbling amusement park a few coves away called Rocky Point and 3rd generation locals remember the heyday of a place that I imagine was far more pristine than the place we call home now.

Warwick, Rhode Island/Oakland Beach is a place that I have to squint hard to picture myself remaining into my retirement years. There is certainly a blur when I try to imagine the future, but mostly what I think about when I think about home is the place I want my children to come to, perhaps with their children someday. Is this the landscape that I want to walk in my soft-soled shoes, arm in arm with my daughters, reminiscing about a life lived in one place or another?

I have a strong sense of belonging to a place. I was born and raised in Bethlehem, PA. I was surrounded by an impressive number of family members. Holidays were caught in Brownie Box frames, the reds so vivid, images of everyone growing up and growing older. But my daughters do not have a place that they can identify as home. There was no constant for them. We moved so many times when they were young that the photos in the albums require labeling. Each scene is so different, mountains as backdrop, ocean, cities, huge gaps with no relatives sitting around the tree. Instead of big turkeys on Thanksgiving as a centerpiece we rolled raviolis. The gifts that were stacked beneath trees at Christmas were homemade; one year a balance beam, a cradle, stilts, quilts, homemade books, dolls made of fabric. We strung rose hips and popcorn and drilled tiny holes to thread ribbons through sea shells we found on the beach across the street and topped the tree with a starfish. There was even a bird's nest resting in the boughs of the scrawny tree that we dragged from the woods behind our house!

I convinced myself that we were creating our own traditions and with each move I worked hard to turn the physical space in which we lived into a home. I laboriously labeled the packed boxes so that I knew exactly where to plunk them down on moving day. There was familiarity with objects carefully arranged. The oak hutch that belonged to Sarah and Kate's great-great grandma that their dad scraped and sanded to find exquisite detail, the collection of photos that were too precious to change from their frames, the blue spice cabinet purchased for a song when I was pregnant with Sarah, paintings, one in particular painted Degas style of ballerinas found at a yard sale in which I convinced the seller that it wasn't worth much because the paint is cracked and sold it to me for seven dollars! He threw in a drafting table for ten more that sits in the corner of my living room waiting for art to be made. I just brought it from Sarah's apartment when she decided to leave Concord, NH three weeks ago. It feels right to have it here. Eventually she'll want it back, but for now it's home for a painting I found in an art market in Cuba and an Oklahoma landscape, a blurr photographed in passing with the shutter opened wide.

Everything in my house has a story and a history. I can tell you where it came from and how long it's been around. I've moved so often that I can't afford to keep every single thing that means something, so I choose the things that mean the most. When my daughters come home I want them to see something familiar. I want them to feel connected to a place when their feet hit the ground. I want them to want to be here and to feel something settled inside them. I prepare the meals that they know. I make up the spare bedroom with blankets that I held onto, a large painting of a mother embracing her baby that I painted from a photo of me and Molly. I was wearing a bright orange skirt and chambray shirt and Molly was nestled in my lap with a gentle smile on her face. There are photos three deep on the chest in that room and books beside the bed that I read to them when they were so much younger, some autographed by their authors that my mother stood in long lines to get, Steven Kellogg a favorite, and Graeme Base with his fabulous illustrations.

The most important part for me is their desire to be here, to understand that home is not just a place, rather it just might be the familiarity of the beat of a heart that waits patiently for their return.