My Strongest Conjuration Part 2

Foundation Issues*

 

“You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s all right.” Maya Angelou

For what now seems too long, I want more than ever before to go home. My greatest challenge, as always is that my entire concept of home is tricky.

Typically, like Ebeneezer Scrooge’s happier visitations with the Ghost of Christmas Past, when I ponder home, warm feelings of Family Past flow into my fore thoughts. For me, however, debris and sometimes rusted car doors also flow in those treacherous waters. While I mastered those waters long ago, after years of “dealing with it,” it’s now a stale, old happenstance. I typically choose to move forward.

 

But I’m writing about my concept of home, so I’m going to remain in this stream for a moment.

Truth: My early life actually began in Pleasantville, U.S.A. The middle child of my parents’s first three offspring, we were blessed with three generations of a closely connected, devoted, loving and attentive family. After we all migrated to Arizona, we remained close. And then Quinn, my fourth sibling perished from a cold. Though my parents had three more children over the next five years, they never really recovered from the loss or the remorse and guilt that lurk silently in the shadows of such tragedies.

By the time I realized something about anything, my parents were no longer like the Cleavers or even the Conners. We slept, kept breathing, ate regularly, people came and went, so nothing was different. And yet nothing was the same. Gradually boarders and nannies replaced grandparents and aunts. Our new, extended family branched out in so many directions, my brother and I were prematurely independent – far too unsupervised for children our ages. In our family unit’s complexity we became more like a grove than a tree.

 

Truth: my siblings and I, naturally all true survivalists, have maneuvered around the globe longer than we’ve lived in the same states. For me, the concept of home has often been incorporeal, not too unlike those who endured migrations during the Great Depression. For the brief time I was an average schoolgirl, home was where I went after classes – when I didn’t play hooky. Home was dry, nobody was hungry, we knew where to find what we needed – and where to hide when we should.

 

“Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.”
Mother Teresa

“*Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock.” Matthew 7:24 (NLT)

 

art: “A Christmas Carol – Mr. Fezziwig’s Ball” by John Leech – http://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons – https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Christmas_Carol_-_Mr._Fezziwig%27s_Ball.jpg#

 

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My Strongest Conjuration – Part 3

The Story Within; My Greatest Agony

 

“This is a great idea,” I thought. “I’m a home body. I’ve been a home maker most of my life, so writing about home will be a breeze.” After outlining and then drafting My Strongest Conjuration, Parts 1 and 2, the breeze quickly developed into an emotional thunderstorm. Telling myself, “Heh, No worries, I like to dance in the rain” I shook off the drama.

After some days work a squall developed. Frustrated with my keyboard, taking pens and tablets, a pile of ripped or crumpled paper soon surrounded me. “What was I thinking?!” I’d dismissed my outline and ended my previous post abruptly. Oh yeah, Divine intervention. Right?

The next days flew past, while I poured myself into volumes of text. And then yesterday I deleted the entire week’s work. Shockingly captivating, it missed my point; while my journey to here has been marvelous, this is not home.

Truth: Home is where my heart breaks. In my actual history, however dramatic, my early life is a suspense thriller and at some points a horror story. You name it, I probably experienced it. And then, after feeling comfortable that the worst possible seasons were behind me, the past eight years became another series of losses.

Yet, in retrospect my prevailing theme so far has clearly been “victorious against all odds”. Much of “it” happened in or close to home, so it’s no surprise my attitude about home had become corrupted lately.

Now, weeks into this project, there is no escaping the concept.

Leaving my father’s house, an image of home was solid in my mind. With my ‘beloved’ and our children we would live happily ever after; “Where Thou art – That – is Home -*”

While that may work out beautifully in some stories, it didn’t in mine. Ten years and four sons later I had become a broken, single, working mom. After a while, and some ego mending, home was any four walls that enclosed the right person**. Or in our case, the right persons, my sons and me.

While we share excellent memories with my family and friends in several different places, their curb appeal, their aromas and their colors faded away long ago. Later on this unmarried, unattached woman with no conspicuous resources was proud buying my first houses. They were nice while my sons were close by, but once they’d all left my nest, they became buildings to be visited while not working. As Daddy often said, they were where I’d hang my hat.***

Years later, still hopeful, I married again. Convinced that God joined us together, the right persons between four walls, we set out building a life together and home. While some of the following years with my best friend were lively, spontaneous and occasionally rewarding, the marriage ended with a thud seventeen years later.

Home then became a brand new apartment with an eastern balcony overlooking a lagoon. However picturesque, it was cold and uninviting. And yet, living there taught me to fully understand that,

To be with the right person, one must first be the right person.

God loves me as He does everyone else; and to complete that circle, loving myself has now become a higher priority. For the past several years, my mission has been to be me, and not merely settle for whatever is left of me. While working through the mire, this new focus promises to lend to a far better concept of home.

“I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.” Maya Angelou 1928 – 2014

“How priceless is Your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of Your wings” Psalm 36:7 (NIV)

Title reference: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” Maya Angelou 1928 – 2014

* 724 by Emily Dickinson 1830 – 1886
**“Home is any four walls that enclose the right person.” Helen Rowland 1875 – 1950
***”Any old place I can hang my hat is home sweet home to me.” William Jerome 1865 – 1932