Home is a Place of Belonging
even when it isn't a place at all
Issue #62
Finding Home
The rain began on the twenty minute drive to the lake, threatening our plans to kayak for the first time since last year. Even though it stopped by the time we arrived, the lake was higher than we’d ever seen it and the water and sky were an uninviting, mirrored gray.
Reluctantly I walked to the edge of the lake to see if anyone else was out there and saw two small kayaks in the distance. I thought about the land-locked months behind us and even the argument we’d pushed through to arrive at this moment. I walked back to my husband.
“Okay,” I said.
I was the first one to get in the water which meant I was the first one to see the rainbow sliding out of the gray clouds. What I didn’t know yet was the lake itself would be a homecoming of sorts.
Leaving Home
A few days after our lake trip, my son and I traveled together to set up his dorm room for his sophomore year of college. He’d been a bright light in our home all summer, playing board games, watching movies with us, helping out around the house, and always ready with a hug. His departure had been looming in my mind, not unlike the gray skies that hung over the lake after the rainstorm.
I didn’t realize how much space it was taking up inside of me until I sat down for my Zoom art class the week before he moved out. The focus of the class was on writing and illustrating Haiku poems. Most of you will know about these small, Japanese poems from learning about them in school. In case you’ve forgotten, Haikus are traditionally a three line poem that follows the syllable pattern 5-7-5. The limitation in syllables can be an invitation to whittle down to the essence of what you are seeing, thinking, or feeling.
The following words and the accompanying illustrations tumbled onto the page in the hour we had to work.
My tall son
is the cream between our Oreo
for a little bit longer.
The fact that these were the first words that came out told me just how much I was thinking about our son leaving home. Naming the feeling didn’t take the sadness away but it did relieve some of the intense pressure that had been building up around it and for that I was grateful.
Coming Home
A few weeks ago I started teaching a theater class. Teaching theater is not new to me but the amount of time my teaching skills had been on sabbatical made the first weeks of class a mixture of nerves and delight. Even as I stumbled through lesson planning and navigating the nuanced moments of teaching in a classroom, I had the overwhelming sense of getting a part of myself back that had been lost.
Around this time I watched a documentary about the theater/circus group, Cirque Du Soleil. The documentary told story after story of performers with unique skills and passions but whose skills were without a home until they were invited to join the company. Suddenly the part of themselves that didn’t fit anywhere else had a place to belong.
That’s how I feel about God bringing theater back into my life, a part of me that had been orphaned now has a home.
Finding Home (continued)
The rainbow disappeared beneath the clouds as we began to kayak across the lake. Heading further and further out, the few people on or around the lake faded away behind us. The lap, lap of my paddle against the water provided the same sense of comfort that a baby must feel when she hears her mother’s heartbeat. I’d known the sound of water all my life.
A gray heron made its way across the lake, bringing with it the evening sunlight as each cloud took on a golden halo. Aside from the paddles cutting through the water and the song of an occasional bird, the lake was silent.
Eventually we arrived at my favorite tree, a Bald Cypress, dubbed Aimee’s tree when we first came across it last summer. I’d worried that part of its glory might be submerged under the rain water but there it stood with the same frank and friendly presence, unaware of its own beauty.
I found out that day that home is the sound of water and the warm welcome of your favorite tree.
Home is a hug with one of your favorite people (even if he doesn’t live at home anymore).
Home is also finding a part of yourself that you’ve misplaced along the way.
And-
Home is a book that you revisit throughout your life, when you open to any page you’re immediately transported to the characters and world that you love.
Home is a friendship “where you both agree that you’ve never met anyone else that you can connect with on a deep level in every way” (as my daughter described this week).
What about you? Where are you finding a place of belonging lately? What people or places make you feel like you’re home?
Continue the Journey
A Place to Belong: Here’s another post I wrote about the search for belonging with a reference to a very fitting movie called Swimming with Men.
Going Away to College: On the day I was writing this newsletter, I came across these thoughts by Tanner Olson on sending your child to college. He shares his own experience of leaving home and gives some advice to parents.
Frances Ha: This 2012 black and white film with Greta Gerwig is not going to be for everyone (do your own research, pls) but as I watched it this week, Frances’s deep desire to find a place of belonging, both in her relationships and in her work, was tangible.
“It's that thing when you're with someone, and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it... but it's a party... and you're both talking to other people, and you're laughing and shining... and you look across the room and catch each other's eyes...that is your person in this life…and it's this secret world that exists right there in public, unnoticed, that no one else knows about. That's what I want out of a relationship. Or just life, I guess.”
-Frances from Frances Ha
The Bikeriders: This is another movie I watched this week that explores the need to belong and what you’re willing to do or not do to find that home, based on true events. (I had to fast forward through the violence, but there is redemption at the end.)
Blessings from the Guest Nest,
-Aimee
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