This morning I watched a video on TED Talks. Pico Iyer is an author who writes about travel, in a contemplative way. In the talk he discusses how people of multiple nations and cultures define “home”. I am someone living a state border away from where all my relatives and I were born. I am not a traveler or a well-travelled person, but this spoke to me. There is indeed a difference between the structure and soil I occupy and what my soul calls home.
I have been considering my relationship with my own physical house lately. As usual, I have been using some of my summer break to dig through clutter and eradicate dust bunnies. I have noticed, within myself, some missing boundaries, some nondescript holes in how I occupy my life here. There are layers to uncover, sections and coats of many colors.
My first memories of being in this house are of a day when my Significant Other, my son and I spent a few hours patching some holes, the first in a series of repairs leading to a complete restoration. S.O. brought wood and spackle. I, grateful that my toddler had fallen asleep on a blanket and pillows, and about halfway pregnant with Susanna, started cleaning some closets and floors. I could describe page upon page what was damaged here. We focused instead on what was possible, and what S.O. (an exceptionally talented individual) knew he could create. I was more of a witness to what I knew could unfold, and it did.
There are no perceptible holes here now. There are clean walls and restored floors, all systems functional. The house occupies the same shape and shell, but is made of our own history. There are stories to tell. There is the shocking memory of when the ocean swelled into the house during Superstorm Sandy, and the aftermath of cleaning wet mud as FEMA dropped off boxes of self-heating lasagna. Heartbreaking, to know that today as I write this people in Texas are experiencing a storm and flood entering their homes. Sometimes, we learn how what we think we have made solid is fragile, like we are.
These memories are the easier ones, because they are followed by memories of two smiling kids running around. I have photos of them playing on the underfloor S. O. exposed on his own after the storm, just before he repaired beams and installed a rich, dark wood in time for Christmas. We had reached even further into the underbelly of the house. Their smiles were wide enough to span to South America, love emanating through the pixels.
This big world, with its beautiful people of all kinds, is a scene of incomprehensible healing. I will never stop believing that we all have a purpose here, despite what we live through. I have not healed from the memory of Susanna in the living room, on that worst night of my life, when I saw that she was not going to wake up. Much healing has occurred, as I live each day and do my best, but the universal forces which can heal those memories, still stuck in places inside of the walls of the house as well as the walls I have around myself, will have to come from beyond the scope of this earthly home.
My family, as I describe it, lives in multiple nations and dimensions. I do not think in terms of walls and borders. S.O. carries with him the memories of a distant place. I carry within myself many homes, not as far away on the map but gone over time. My son will remember being here as a brother to Susanna. He always will be, though no one can see them together. Susanna still lives with us, though she does not occupy physical space. Someday, as I have learned so deeply through my daughter and her destiny, there will be another home on the other side. I cannot picture it, but I know who will be there.
