NS January 11th, 2007

I’ve never been good at defining ‘home’. Is it where you hang your hat, where your heart is, or where you’re bound? Is it where you spent your childhood or where your children will spend theirs? Is it the first house you ever lived in or the first house you buy? Or even, the house in which you die?

The idea, the feeling, the intangibleness of ‘home’ has intrigued, haunted and unsettled me. For someone who lived in the same state until she was 20, but in ten different houses (or apartments), it seemed the boxes were always just unpacked, the books on their shelves and the clothes folded neatly, when word traveled down the command chain that it was time to move again. My parents, college roommates, landlords — someone was always telling me to move on, pack my bags and take my pictures down, being sure not to leave nail holes unfilled or yellowing, frayed tape stuck to the walls. Not to leave a mark or an impression. Eventually, I just stopped putting them up.

My feet, being a product of their environment, became restless. These were the feet that allowed me to walk out of the house that holds the most memories for me — the historic, old house where I had a pool, a horse, a go cart…and where my younger sister died. The thought of leaving was too much. In all that time, her room was still completely intact, just as she left it. The lavender bedspread lovingly smoothed by my mother’s hands, the Cabbage Patch dolls lined up in a row, the lemon drop candies on the bedside table, her bag still packed for school. A child-size version of Miss Haversham’s house. Waiting for the clock to start ticking again, for a breath to exhale, for life to start over. And so we did.

I cried when we left that house and all of the things, the smells, the familiar memories. I hardened a bit that day, promising to never become that attached to one place again, to always keep moving. Even though it was for the best and I didn’t begrudge my parents their choice, nowhere else ever felt like home to me.

Then came that summer, in 1998. The summer I met my husband in Germany, by some phenomenal twist of fate, in my first trip abroad, after my freshman year at college. He was a tall, dashing Englishman who had lived in London all of his life and I was a small-town girl from Indiana who had lived on farms and was feeling her way blindly through the hazy mist of emerging adulthood. We fell in love deeply and quickly, traveling around Europe on weekends and building a bond that would bind us together so tightly that when we were in each other’s arms I felt I might explode with joy and rapture and longing all at the same time. We spent a romantic weekend in Paris where we sat on the marble steps of some imposing, nameless monument and looked out at the twinkling lights of the Seine, too absorbed in each other to care about taking in the culture, the museums, the bistros. Paris would always be there — discovering one another couldn’t wait.

We knew we only had a matter of weeks together. And though the thought of parting made me ache with an indescribable emptiness, my love and determination always rushed quickly to fill that emptiness, breathing life into me once again, like blood carrying oxygen to the body and all its vital organs, pooling and patching the holes in my heart. That’s when I realized that I was at the top of the command chain of my life now and I called the shots. I strode to the helm and made my first major, life-changing decision — I was moving to England. Whatever my definition and thoughts of home had been up to that point were about to be blown out of the water.

to be continued

• Home and Hearth , Squish Squish
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