The Road to Home

Home is a word which historically sparks little emotion for me. Growing up in the military, as an "army brat" we had no home. We lived in a lot of places, and in a lot of houses, but none that ever felt like home.

The closest I ever came to having those feelings was returning 'home' to visit my in-laws after I was married. They lived in New Jersey in the same town where I went to high school and held every intention of making home someday, so I allowed myself an attachment I had never experienced before. But even my in-laws sold that house and moved to Florida.

Growing up without grandparents, my parents had no home base. Of course we would go 'home' to West Virginia where my uncles lived, and to Illinois at times where other family lived, when we were stationed somewhere close by. Never did those houses feel like home to me. Never was there one house where whenever I crossed the threshold I knew this was it, home.

More than a few years back I went to Italy with a group of friends. We rented a house outside of Florence for two weeks and used that as home base. After traveling around the countryside, to both small towns and large, we finished our trip with four days in Rome. Walking the streets of that city, along the banks of the Arno I had a sense of belonging. But the feeling that was most striking to me, that I remember very clearly all these years later, is getting off the plane in Rome when we first arrived. The plane was parked on the tarmac and it was necessary to walk to a trolley that would take us to the terminal. The moment my foot hit the ground, early in the morning after an all night flight, I had the strangest sensation. Home. I felt as if I had come home. I have held that as evidence of the longing for, and recognition of, what I am missing.

My husband bought this house twelve years ago, before I knew him. Stumbling upon it after graduating from law school and moving to Augusta, before he was married, before he had children, he told me how, when he first drove past this house he thought 'I'd like to live there someday.' It was an unusual aspiration for a young lawyer; a small bungalow on a nondescript street, with none of the glamour one might expect would engender that kind of yearning.

Almost thirty years, and two marriages later, my again single husband drove by this same house. Finding it sporting a 'For Sale by Owner' sign he jumped from the car, knocked on the door, and began the process of ownership and renovation. A small two bedroom bungalow is now a three bedroom stunner, with three fireplaces, a 'cook's kitchen', a library and a garage-bungalow out back. The garden is a work in progress but holding its own in the neighborhood. And yet from the street it still has an understated, hundred year old, curb appeal. Still it is not home.

I wish it was because it so home for my husband. So much so that he never plans on moving again. After a lifetime of moving, first with my father's career and then with my first husband, I cannot imagine that kind of loyalty. Although I do believe houses deserve loving ownership and think they respond to it. How that relationship, between home and owner is measured I do not know, but I believe it is a fact. And while I do love this house, an outer manifestation of my husband's creative self, and I do take care of it, it is not home. Not yet.

I don't really expect to feel at home, I realize. Two of my favorite childhood books were Black Beauty and Heidi. Reading them both repeatedly, I lingered over every word. The theme they have in common is constant displacement and uprooting. Only late in life does Black Beauty come home; Heidi is luckier and returns home to her grandfather when she is still young. I identified with both; hopefully, with longing, finding comfort in the idea that one could survive such upheaval.

Four years ago, after looking at houses for three summers, we purchased a small cabin in the mountains of North Carolina. It is technically my house; my name is on the mortgage and I pay the bills. But we found it together, chose it together and love it together. And suddenly, surprisingly, I feel like I have come home at last.

I am not sure I would have found it by myself. I am not sure I would have bought it by myself. I don't even know if I would have been looking for it by myself. But for my husband I might not even have come to the realization that I could have a home. But I have, and I do, and it has started me down the path of finding the mountain woman in me. The roots of my tree revealing themselves perhaps. Time will tell, but it is a good beginning as beginnings go.