The Home of Your Self

For six months we have been looking at houses to find a home.  Once we made the decision to move back north, the search began.  Not on a deadline.  Not from a set of house criteria, like must have a 2-car attached garage.  But with the houses, themselves, popping up for sale and us treating that popcorn like Christmas presents.  On-line house hunting platforms be cheered!

There have been three houses that survived our selection and walk-through.

Then, this funny thing happened.  We looked at the three houses and asked whether we might have found a “forever home,” instead of the next flip.

Perhaps not surprisingly, as it turns out, all three houses have a kitchen that is the heart of the house.  One, used upon occasion in a cooking show.  One, created by a couple in the hospitality industry.  The third, the smallest kitchen, but it has a cast iron stove and a door leading straight out to the backyard, overlooking these Adirondack mountains.

Subconsciously, now consciously, I have gravitated to the kitchen.  Not to the kitchen of my mother.  That’s the kitchen I grew up in and it’s the kitchen I’ve largely had as an adult.  The kitchen that’s not “a kitchen.” My mother worked full time and then some at the travel agency owned by my parents, two towns over, in North Jersey.  I was a daughter of the Feminist generation, which made me a latch key, home alone kid.  My memories after a certain age, are walking home from middle school or getting off the bus from high school and having the entire house to myself, spent largely with my piano and my books and the record player until I got a Walkman cassette player with headset.  (Think Kevin Bacon in the original “Footloose” and moving the livingroom table, so I could dance and sing the whole room.)  There, I learned how to make Kraft brand mac-n-cheese, grilled cheese to light brown perfection, and the ultimate raw egg in a glass of milk for shiny hair. (It was the 80s - be gentle in your judgments!)

The offer on the hospitality house was declined.  Not a surprise; too new to market.  Too high a list price.

Back-and-forth ensued on the two other houses to a point on the numbers where the choice was up to us.

And: we couldn’t decide. Literally. No fooling. (We are blessed with Shannon, absolutely the best, ever, real estate agent.)

That’s when I realized, waking up yesterday morning, that we had arrived at the two loving kitchens of my upbringing.  The cozy kitchen – the one where I imagine Kevin coming in from three feet of snow and stomping his boots, sliding in to the bench by the stove, as I pull warm cookies out of the oven – that’s Mama’s kitchen all day long.  The kitchen of my American Field Service summer abroad in a small Austrian village in the Alps.  The first time I had ever experienced a stay-at-home mother, happily running her home, teaching me to grow a small plot of vegetables and how to snap fresh-picked pea pods just so to release the peas to cook them for dinner.  A woman who taught me how to run a washing machine, and the glorious smell of dried sheets being pulled off outdoor clothes lines at a 3,000’+ altitude of snow and sunshine.  Mama and I didn’t even speak a common language.  Hers was Austrian German; mine English and French.  It made no difference.  We each picked up a few of the other’s words, perfected charades, and shared her kitchen.  She’d sneak me what just came out of the oven, whilst scolding Papa if he came near with an outstretched hand.  A house already filled with five children, where adding one more, namely me, only magnified her love for us all.

In the second contender house: the bigger kitchen of two country sinks, miles of countertops, too many cabinets, and a northern Italian by way of southern France décor. That kitchen? That’s my half-British, travel agents parents, all over Europe gastronomic feast roots.  As an only child of those travel agent parents, I was blessed with trips abroad two to three times a year, through every country of Western Europe where my “foodie” parents ate.  Bourdain, Steves, and Tucci could have learned from my parents!  I have endless memories of restaurant after restaurant, cheese and sausage shops and patisseries lined with desserts as precious as Impressionist landscapes, smells of the breads piled in woven baskets where half the town center was to be found early on any given morning.

What is abundantly clear is that after a career in courtrooms spanning more than thirty years --.  After being part of a generation where more than 50% of us divorced --.  Having been among the first daughters with mothers working outside the home --.  Finding myself gravitating into Mama Ludescher’s kitchen, and Auntie Jen’s kitchen in England, and Aunt Joan’s kitchen in North Jersey, and the fellowship hall at church kitchen filled with women for whom English was a second language --.  Being armed with the hours I carved out of my own work days to give to Sam in our kitchen at the lake where we decorated more Pillsbury slice-and-bake sugar cookies than the Dough Boy, himself --.  And, adding in the detail that I am adopted --.

What is abundantly clear is this:  It's time to purchase the house that will become our home.

Here’s what I learned at this checkered flag.

You don’t have to come from “the perfect home.”  Or have anyone to make “home” with as a family, or couple, or group, or unit.  It may be where you started.  It may be where you’ve chosen.  You may be in a pass-through location on a military base, abroad.  It may be a shoebox on minimum wage.  Or your in-laws or your own parents, at whatever the age.

What you need to ask yourself is what one thing could define “home” for you in a way that will bring you comfort when you lay your head upon a pillow at night?  A window with a potted geranium.  A small table next to your chair, big enough to hold “The Hobbit” that you just checked out from the local, public library.  A small, but reliably flat desk, where you have paperclips, a filled stapler, rubber bands, sticky notes, and the Bic blue ink pens you prefer for writing in your journal.

Anywhere can be “home,” if you let it catch up to you and your massive jumble of thoughts.  If you allow the good memories and those who have loved you to rise beyond whatever has troubled you.  Those memories of those people and those places are in there, inside of you, jumbled up in a box upon which you’ve crushed the lid. Guess what? One hour on a Sunday morning after church when you were in 6th Grade is in that box. Let out the laughter of those six or seven women putting on the big, noisy, percolating pots of coffee, and warming the kitchen with the ovens, moments before the congregation spilled across the lawn, and you had to share those women with everyone else.

I was surprised to find myself crying yesterday morning when I realized what was going on with the house search.  Big, warm, slow-falling tears, whispered to Kevin before we got out of bed and cast off our flannel pajamas in favor of big, wooly sweaters and “feels like 14.” It was love. Love had found its way through and conquered all the reasons I had given myself - and you are giving yourself - to not be “home.”

The day will come that your entire living quarters will define your “home.” You will find that space you’ve dreamed of to live within.

You can hold onto that dream as you journey towards it, without letting it make you feel sad or angry or frustrated that you’re not already there or getting there sooner.

Between here and there, lay claim over one reliable spot.  While you are there, be present with those fond memories and those lovely future daydreams.  Allow the tangible to ground you into a sense of gratitude for the here and now.  It is okay to let yourself experience that you belong exactly where you are at this very minute, even if that sense of belonging is only to yourself in this space.

What you will realize is that you’ve already been “home” your whole life in your own life.  It’s not that Webster’s dictionary definition of a “home” as one, fixed, constructed with nails and a hammer place.  It’s that everything you touch and you move through is influenced by you and your sense of “home” as the place of the roots of your comfort.  The release.  The relaxation.  The tears.  The joy! 

You are your home, and the house is merely an extension of where you already live, inside the home of your self.