Home

Longing.

For a place to call my own. A place to paint and decorate in this beach-bungalow country-style I have in mind. A place to plant a small garden. A place to put up a sandbox in the backyard. A small place—just enough space for us all to have a little privacy and a lot of family together time. A place to use our kitchen table every night instead of crowding around Boddhi’s tiny table. A place to hang the pictures that have been in storage for over a year. A place where I can put Boddhi to bed in his own room—reading him to sleep instead of nursing him to sleep in my bed. A place that feels comfortable and safe. A home.

Dude and I have always shied away from buying a home. We move a lot, and we never wanted to be tied down to a house. The commitment, the responsibility, the risk.

Lately we have both been checking out houses on our daily drive to and from Mike’s school, a simultaneous shift in our desires.

"Ooh look at that pretty yellow one. I could live there.”

“That one looks just like a cottage. I wonder how much it sells for?”

“I can picture Boddhi and I playing underneath that shade tree.”

We are aware that we are graduate students living on loans, scholarships and a part-time job. We know the impossibility of buying a house right now. We don’t know for sure where we will settle. Dude wants to get his PhD—that could lead us anywhere --Oxford, MS, Fort Worth, TX, Berkley, California or New York. But the longing is mostly new.

Mike’s wanted to plant roots for years. We keep dragging her behind us, hoping any damage is minimal.

Maybe spring has stirred this longing, an echo of my memories of home.

My whole family had this collective fantasy once. We lived in a not-terrible but definitely not nice or clean or safe neighborhood. My mom made our house cozy; it was always clean and decorated with antiques.

After we lived there ten years or so, my parents decided to put the house up for sale, and we began to look at other houses. We found one in a nicer, middle-class, good school district, big-tree kind of neighborhood. My parents told us stories about the renovations: we could each have our own room, we would tear down walls upstairs and create a game room, and we might put in a big tub.

I was so excited; I went to bed every night thinking about it. I would not have to be ashamed of my house anymore. BUT--plans fell through—our house could not be sold (foundation issues—which the FHA inspector said were fine when we moved in). We stayed in that same house until my parent’s divorce. We were all heart-broken, and I think we felt cheated (at the time), something was never the same after that. A dream deferred?

Looking back, I now see that what we had was a home, a place where our life was lived.

A place where we played in the sprinklers on hot days, putting on bathing suits, jumping over the water spray, eating our white-bread sandwiches outside.

A place where we sat down to a home-cooked meal every night, laughing so hard at rude humor, my mom threatened to send us all away if we did not calm down.

A place where my parents hosted the best Halloween party ever, decorating the carport with hand woven spider webs and egg carton spiders, building a coffin out of cardboard-- painted black; my dad, dressed as Dracula rising out of the coffin, offering candy to each passing child. We wore our homemade costumes complete with wigs made out of yarn.

A place where we put up a live Christmas tree every year, bringing in old cardboard boxes from the shed, playing Christmas records, while we floated warmly around the tree, hanging our homemade, heirloom decorations. A place where my mom and grandma spent hours in the kitchen making candy, cookies and pies for Christmas, shewing us away from the hot sweets: Peanut- butter balls, coconut- balls, turtles, pecan, lemon-meringue and chocolate-meringue pies.

A place where my mom made us homemade waffles for breakfast and sometimes dinner (a recipe passed down from her mother, that I now use every Saturday); she would stand above the waffle iron, passing out waffles to grabbing children below; we went back for seconds and thirds before she even sat down with her first. I always ate mine plain with butter—no syrup. They were that good. My modified “healthy” dry, whole-wheat recipe-- cannot compare.

A place where on cold winter mornings, my mom would get up long before us and begin a fire in the stone fireplace. She would move to the kitchen, making homemade hot chocolate to tempt us out of bed. Gathering our clothes for the day (which she set out for us the night before), she would place them gently on the hearth to warm them. Then she would quietly wake us, inviting us to go and sip cocoa by the fire.

My adult perspective shows me the warmth and beauty that was our home.

I wonder if my own longing is for the home my mother helped create for us. I want a home, a place to live my life with my family.

If I am honest with my self, I have to admit that we are doing a pretty good job of creating that home wherever we are. We usually make homemade waffles on Saturday (I have passed this recipe on to my stepdaughters and my daughter—and I look forward to including Boddhi when he is old enough). We try to eat dinner together every night (we could improve here, I know). We take a two-mile walk (almost) every day. We head out to the fish-pond around 6pm everyday. We are making meaningful memories even in this graduate-school-limbo world.

We received notice this week that we are eligible for a three-bedroom apartment-- here in the university-housing complex. Boddhi could have his own room and our living room would be a little bigger. We would still be in an apartment though, and I think we feel a little sadness that this move is not “the move.”

My mom gave me some soft yellow paint, and let me choose from her storage room of antiques. I can paint the walls in the soft yellow, distress some of my antique furniture with a sky blue paint, buy a second hand wicker couch—creating some of the beach-bungalow-style I want. Hopefully we can get out of (or at least reduce) our storage.

This would mean staying on campus among the ancient trees and historic buildings. We could keep our fish feeding rituals and start new ones –like using the outdoor pool here in the summer.

It is my perspective that needs changing not our location—we will be fine—here or there, apartment or cozy cottage. A home is where you live your life…

--Sadge