On Home-and the Lack Thereof
I have never literally been homeless. Although my family was poor, we never came to that fine edge where we couldn't make the rent. In large part that was due to the fact that my father was a professional carpenter and built our house. We didn't have a mortgage, or rent. We had credit card payments to cover what those materials cost, but my father saved a mint by building the home almost singlehandedly in an economically depressed area where land was cheap. My mom worried about putting food on the table and clothes on our backs, but there was never any fear that we wouldn't have somewhere to sleep. In that way I was blessed with the gift of normalcy, as are all children who never have to fear being left out in the cold.
I have come to discover over time, however, that there are many figurative types of home. Home can literally mean the dwelling that shields you from the elements, but it can also mean the place where you belong, a place that feels comfortable or familiar, a place that belongs to you and you to it. I have struggled with pretty much every definition of home there is outside of the physical domicile. I still struggle. It still matters. And I still envy every person who has some facet of home that I don't-which, let's face it, when you consider all of the facets I'm missing, almost everyone has at least one.
Some people have heritage. You see that a lot here in Northfield where the Norwegian sweaters are always on display this time of year. Look, we can all get together and eat Lutefisk and wear lovely sweaters and listen to music and be blonde. Yay! My family has a bit of a tangled up immigration story, most of which lies in shadow. My father's family does not know its own history. Our name proves that we are from the British Isles (can't mistake that 'Mc') but we don't have a plaid or a hometown where several generations of us lived or even traditions or recipes that we pass down. Nobody knows where my mother's father's family is from (the unhelpfully generic last name 'Westerman' gives no clues). Her mother is from New Zealand, a place that we never really heard stories about. Am I a proud Scot? Irish? New Zealander? Not really. American? Perhaps, but without the regional specificity that allows traditions to grow and flourish. Our family hasn't stayed in any particular area of the country. We don't have sweaters or food or ceremonies to celebrate who we are as people distinct from everyone else. We just are.
Some people have kin. Blood is thicker than water and all that. Your family is annoying, but they'll put up with you, right? Errr, maybe not. My mom's family lives on the west coast, so we've always been almost completely removed from them due to simple logistics. They weren't the chatty phone call types or the letter-writing types, so in the pre-internet days there was almost no contact. There wasn't any ire, just a vacuum-vague goodwill from thousands of miles away. My father's family is more the clannish sort, and somehow our little family unit got branded the black sheep. My mother thinks it was because of her: she wasn't Southern enough to please them, so she (and my sister and I) got shut out. This insular little unit is the very definition of the clan home I'm describing, but we were shut out of it. Being an amiable person, I am permitted to visit at will. But I don't belong. I'm a guest, not a member. And even that is more than could ever be said for my sister or my mother.
Some people have a life partner. A little piece of me mourns every time I hear a song that proclaims "it doesn't matter where we go as long as we're together" or see one of those sweet little decorative samplers that proclaims "home is where the heart is" or "it doesn't matter what you have but rather who's beside you". Turns out nobody is beside me. I come home to me, myself, and I half the time and a dependent four-year-old the other half. I have tried with little success to correct this state of affairs, but no luck yet. There is no partner to have my back, to stand up for me no matter what, to put me first. Nobody for me to grow roots with and invent traditions with and entwine my existence with. At least, not yet. Maybe someday that will change.
Some people have a cause. They find that thing they believe in and fight for it alongside their brothers and sisters in arms, as it were. I am currently dedicating my professional life to an educational institution that no longer includes people from my demographics and my personal life to a religion that is shared by very few of the people in my daily life. The religious community is in many ways the easier problem to solve. I am at this very moment involved in a transition to a new church where I think I'll have a better chance of participating in a faith community. Religion is by its nature personal anyway, so it's OK that I can't share it extensively with most of my friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Having a church home-a faith community where I can fully participate-has always been something I've valued but has been difficult for me because it can be hard to find a non-homogenous community where nuances of faith are celebrated. But I'm working on it. The ideals of education are a tougher pill for me to swallow, as I work hard to help an institution educate future leaders-as long as they aren't from poor, rural schools, that is. Those people don't belong here anymore. I am a relic of a tiny segment lost in the past at this celebration of the elite.
Some people have a hometown. There's this place where they always feel happy to return-whether it's the home of their childhood or the community of their current life. I have been a fish out of water in every place I've lived since I started school. In Rising Sun, Maryland, I was rejected for being too poor. In Gate City, Virginia, I was branded a northerner who could never be Southern or Country enough to belong. Here in Minnesota, I'm not Midwestern and reserved enough. I'm a mismash of cultures that clash with each other and put me at odds with my neighbors no matter where I go. I'm always the odd duck, no matter which pond I swim in.
It's pretty fruitless to fixate on what one doesn't have. Nothing I can do can make any group of people declare, "Yes! You're one of us!" (Much less people lost to the past, who cannot do anything.) I can't rewrite my family's history or traditions or go back and coach little me on her lackluster Southern accent. I can't make Carleton accept students from backwater schools like mine or place explicit value (and belonging) on the rural poor. The only thing I can do is to celebrate what I DO have: a clan of dear friends who grant me belonging by the power of their own choice and declare that I can belong here by virtue of my heart even when I feel like a fish out of water. I may not have anyone or anywhere to come home to, but I do have a little scrap of home every time I spend time with a devoted friend, of which I am blessed to have many.
But I must admit that there is a part of me that feels jealous or left out whenever I see those friends walk two-by-two, go home for big Thanksgiving dinners, or talk about representing their hometown or heritage. I know that these homes all look fantastic to me in part because of my ignorance-my longing cannot take into account the costs of home that come with keeping up difficult relationships and reconciling unflattering traits of the place or heritage we came from. But it must be nice to know you came from *somewhere* if only to use that as a comparison point in your reflections on where you're going. Will you eschew your heritage or embrace it? I envy you if you at least know what your heritage is. Every so often, I would like to go home, and the only version I seem to have of that word is all-too-often an empty house.
I say this knowing that I would not trade away what I DO have to find this elusive home I've been craving for most of my life. And it seems like such a petty thing to envy the people I love something that must seem rather insignificant (or even annoying) to them. And yet belonging is the thing I've struggled with most in my life, so it does matter to me. My consolation is only in this: once I had no "people" at all, but today I have a group of lifelong friends that I can call "mine" no matter what other homes appear (or fail to materialize) in my life. As in most things, there is a silver lining, so most of the time I cling to that. But most of the time is not all of the time, and this post is a nod to that inescapable fact.
I have come to discover over time, however, that there are many figurative types of home. Home can literally mean the dwelling that shields you from the elements, but it can also mean the place where you belong, a place that feels comfortable or familiar, a place that belongs to you and you to it. I have struggled with pretty much every definition of home there is outside of the physical domicile. I still struggle. It still matters. And I still envy every person who has some facet of home that I don't-which, let's face it, when you consider all of the facets I'm missing, almost everyone has at least one.
Some people have heritage. You see that a lot here in Northfield where the Norwegian sweaters are always on display this time of year. Look, we can all get together and eat Lutefisk and wear lovely sweaters and listen to music and be blonde. Yay! My family has a bit of a tangled up immigration story, most of which lies in shadow. My father's family does not know its own history. Our name proves that we are from the British Isles (can't mistake that 'Mc') but we don't have a plaid or a hometown where several generations of us lived or even traditions or recipes that we pass down. Nobody knows where my mother's father's family is from (the unhelpfully generic last name 'Westerman' gives no clues). Her mother is from New Zealand, a place that we never really heard stories about. Am I a proud Scot? Irish? New Zealander? Not really. American? Perhaps, but without the regional specificity that allows traditions to grow and flourish. Our family hasn't stayed in any particular area of the country. We don't have sweaters or food or ceremonies to celebrate who we are as people distinct from everyone else. We just are.
Some people have kin. Blood is thicker than water and all that. Your family is annoying, but they'll put up with you, right? Errr, maybe not. My mom's family lives on the west coast, so we've always been almost completely removed from them due to simple logistics. They weren't the chatty phone call types or the letter-writing types, so in the pre-internet days there was almost no contact. There wasn't any ire, just a vacuum-vague goodwill from thousands of miles away. My father's family is more the clannish sort, and somehow our little family unit got branded the black sheep. My mother thinks it was because of her: she wasn't Southern enough to please them, so she (and my sister and I) got shut out. This insular little unit is the very definition of the clan home I'm describing, but we were shut out of it. Being an amiable person, I am permitted to visit at will. But I don't belong. I'm a guest, not a member. And even that is more than could ever be said for my sister or my mother.
Some people have a life partner. A little piece of me mourns every time I hear a song that proclaims "it doesn't matter where we go as long as we're together" or see one of those sweet little decorative samplers that proclaims "home is where the heart is" or "it doesn't matter what you have but rather who's beside you". Turns out nobody is beside me. I come home to me, myself, and I half the time and a dependent four-year-old the other half. I have tried with little success to correct this state of affairs, but no luck yet. There is no partner to have my back, to stand up for me no matter what, to put me first. Nobody for me to grow roots with and invent traditions with and entwine my existence with. At least, not yet. Maybe someday that will change.
Some people have a cause. They find that thing they believe in and fight for it alongside their brothers and sisters in arms, as it were. I am currently dedicating my professional life to an educational institution that no longer includes people from my demographics and my personal life to a religion that is shared by very few of the people in my daily life. The religious community is in many ways the easier problem to solve. I am at this very moment involved in a transition to a new church where I think I'll have a better chance of participating in a faith community. Religion is by its nature personal anyway, so it's OK that I can't share it extensively with most of my friends, coworkers, and neighbors. Having a church home-a faith community where I can fully participate-has always been something I've valued but has been difficult for me because it can be hard to find a non-homogenous community where nuances of faith are celebrated. But I'm working on it. The ideals of education are a tougher pill for me to swallow, as I work hard to help an institution educate future leaders-as long as they aren't from poor, rural schools, that is. Those people don't belong here anymore. I am a relic of a tiny segment lost in the past at this celebration of the elite.
Some people have a hometown. There's this place where they always feel happy to return-whether it's the home of their childhood or the community of their current life. I have been a fish out of water in every place I've lived since I started school. In Rising Sun, Maryland, I was rejected for being too poor. In Gate City, Virginia, I was branded a northerner who could never be Southern or Country enough to belong. Here in Minnesota, I'm not Midwestern and reserved enough. I'm a mismash of cultures that clash with each other and put me at odds with my neighbors no matter where I go. I'm always the odd duck, no matter which pond I swim in.
It's pretty fruitless to fixate on what one doesn't have. Nothing I can do can make any group of people declare, "Yes! You're one of us!" (Much less people lost to the past, who cannot do anything.) I can't rewrite my family's history or traditions or go back and coach little me on her lackluster Southern accent. I can't make Carleton accept students from backwater schools like mine or place explicit value (and belonging) on the rural poor. The only thing I can do is to celebrate what I DO have: a clan of dear friends who grant me belonging by the power of their own choice and declare that I can belong here by virtue of my heart even when I feel like a fish out of water. I may not have anyone or anywhere to come home to, but I do have a little scrap of home every time I spend time with a devoted friend, of which I am blessed to have many.
But I must admit that there is a part of me that feels jealous or left out whenever I see those friends walk two-by-two, go home for big Thanksgiving dinners, or talk about representing their hometown or heritage. I know that these homes all look fantastic to me in part because of my ignorance-my longing cannot take into account the costs of home that come with keeping up difficult relationships and reconciling unflattering traits of the place or heritage we came from. But it must be nice to know you came from *somewhere* if only to use that as a comparison point in your reflections on where you're going. Will you eschew your heritage or embrace it? I envy you if you at least know what your heritage is. Every so often, I would like to go home, and the only version I seem to have of that word is all-too-often an empty house.
I say this knowing that I would not trade away what I DO have to find this elusive home I've been craving for most of my life. And it seems like such a petty thing to envy the people I love something that must seem rather insignificant (or even annoying) to them. And yet belonging is the thing I've struggled with most in my life, so it does matter to me. My consolation is only in this: once I had no "people" at all, but today I have a group of lifelong friends that I can call "mine" no matter what other homes appear (or fail to materialize) in my life. As in most things, there is a silver lining, so most of the time I cling to that. But most of the time is not all of the time, and this post is a nod to that inescapable fact.