Last night, after I had washed and dried my face with my familiar purple hand-towel, my eyes caught the white flash of the tag and for an odd moment I was transfixed by the text printed there: "HOME Collections." I stood bare-footed in the bathroom contemplating this word "home" as it taunted me in all caps and boldface.
A few years ago I would have unhesitatingly told you that my home was where my purple towel's brothers and sisters are neatly folded, in my mother's and father's respective houses in Eugene, Oregon. My home was with my family, my friends, Amazon Park, Sheldon High School, and Spencer's Butte, where winter is drenching and vividly green and where plump blackberries blossom on the side of the road in late summer.
Now, however, things aren't so clearcut. During the last year I've lived in rural California, in Minnesota, in Egypt, in Turkey, in Morocco, back in Minnesota, and now I find myself strangely stationed on a barrier island in southern Texas. A proud sliver of myself will always be Cinderella to the Oregon's glass slipper, and perhaps I'll end up back there one day, but the fact is that I have to stretch the conventional definition of the word "home" to refer to Eugene as such. I love Oregon and the people there, I trek there regularly for holidays, and my extra junk is stashed in my old room, but when I return I sometimes feel like I'm wandering through more memory than experience.
"Home." The black embroidery glared out at me from the tag. It spoke of loving stability and roots, of personal space and convenience and a cozy kitchen where it's OK to make mint tea at three in the morning and then leave your cup out... all things that have been practically alien to me for the past two years.
Am I homeless?
I'm not sure of the answer to this question, and, to tell you the truth, I'm not terribly concerned about the semantical answer. Yes, it's difficult at times, but, in exchange for the uncertainty, I'm as light as seagull bones and susceptible to the slightest breeze. I like that tomorrow could be anything and knowing that I can adapt. In a paradoxical way, I'm grounded in change. And, as she goes vagabonding across the galaxy, this frood always knows where her towel is.
Feel free to talk to me about home anytime you want ... I have a similarly fractured sense of it. I'm not sure I've ever discussed it at length with you, like I have most things. Llamame some evening ...
ReplyDelete- Chris
Your serenity is quite Buddhist in the center of all of this impermanence. I think you used to have a framed quote on your bedroom wall about that. In my mind's opinion, embracing impermanence is the same as embracing truth. We had a discussion about this in history, (framed in the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum), and I argued that our concept of a homeland is an illusion, because everyone descends from a migrant somewhere in their roots...
ReplyDeleteMy heart's opinion is fiery and hard to articulate, but includes the words MY and MINE frequently. I feel very unusual in this current island of 17-to-20 year olds in that my home is where I reside during the school year, because it has no particular other place to be, no walls and furniture infused with nostalgia. Its a different kind of rootlessness, and I have to admit I find it alternately scary and reassuring. So, to make a long comment short- I admire your ability to be grounded in change, and in my own experience I have explored how unnerving this can be.
~kaila