Beautiful Old Broads talk about home

Dear Ones,

At a recent book club meeting, the selected book was “Howard’s End”.  The discussion touched on many subjects  (as it usually does). The topic of home came up and some of the members offered their thoughts on houses and homes.  The consensus was that their favorite house was the place where they spent a large portion of the years raising children.   Memories entwined with Christmas stockings being hung and Easter egg hunts quite naturally are cherished ones.  One woman remarked that she didn’t even like to drive by the house where she’d raised her son for it triggered too many memories.  Another said that when her and her sisters went back to their childhood farm house, one sister refused to go up the gravel road to the house saying that she wanted to remember it just as it was when she was a child.

We all have different outlooks on home.  For some, home is one particular grounded place.  A place where they have cherished belongings and family events wrapped around  solid timbers and walls.  Others don’t form such deep attachments.  Perhaps they were in military or a job demanded many moves and they became inured to moving day.

Whatever the reason, we all have different views of home and moving and roots.

One of my favorite poets, May Sarton wrote a journal called “The House by the Sea”.  In it, she told her readers, how she fell in love with Wild Knoll, her rambling seaside home in Maine and how she knew from a few days after moving in that “I have slipped into these wide spaces, this amazing piece of natural Heaven and haven.”  In her years at “Wild Knoll” she is nourished by the sea and feels her life expanded.  Lucky her.  Not many of us get the opportunity to live on a secluded rocky Maine coast.  And of course many of us would not choose to do so. Too isolated, too cold, too whatever…we all have our quibbles when it comes to houses.

Shifting to a warmer sunnier coast, another writer, Anne Lindbergh shares her experience writing from her small simple cottage on the edge of the Gulf and her journey of discovery on Sanibel Island, Florida. Like all homes, this is a temporary one for her.  But then aren’t all homes temporary?  For though we put down roots and gather possessions, we’re all just passing through this life.  In “Gift From The Sea”, Lindbergh seeks to make sense of her life and to be at peace with herself.  She compares herself to the little hermit crab who sheds his shell and carries his home with him. 

Upon reflection, I think I’m more a hermit crab than say an oyster bed.  I’ve carried my shell on my back from place to place.  Each place has harbored unique experiences that I treasure.  New friends, new options.  But certain things must remain constant.  I  can’t do without sunrises, sunsets, my swing, my teapot, my books. 

The deepest stirrings I felt for home were the ones that overcame me when I sat on the worn step of my mother’s house on Edward Street in Baltinglass Ireland.  I felt her presence strongly and pictured her sitting there with her sisters on a summer evening. The house itself is old but well preserved.  A two story stucco with the back facing the Slaney River.  A house my mother told me about many times.  My Irish family.  Home. 

            “This corner of earth smiles for me beyond all others.”   Horace.