I'll be spending the first two weeks of June at the Homestead National Monument as a writer-in-residence where I'll be working on my poetry manuscript-in-progress, The Cold Reaches, which explores many themes relating to home. As someone who has moved in my adult life a fair amount, I'm particularly interested in learning about how others define home. Is it man-made place? A feeling? A piece of land? It is changeable, or has it remained fixed in one's mind?
So, with that, how do you answer these two questions?
Where are you from?
Where is home?
I'd love to collect your comments and get some discussions going!
Where I'm from: Eau Claire, WI
ReplyDeleteHome: Depends on the day...St. Louis in the day-to-day, but Wisconsin still in my heart.
I grew up in a really tiny town called Macon, MO. But home is hands down the Truman State campus in Kirksville, MO. Its the first place I imagine when someone says home, the first place I picture when I am sick, and the campus covered in snow is what I think about when I am stressed or exhausted. I think it is because it was the very first place I was truly happy. :)
ReplyDeleteWhere I'm from: Indianapolis, IN
ReplyDeleteWhere home is: The house I just purchased in St. Louis. Perhaps more accurately I should say the porch of the house I purchased in St. Louis. When I think of home, I'm sitting there with my coffee in the morning or with a book in the afternoon. I live in a park like setting and prefer the outdoors, so home ends up being defined as one of my outdoor spaces in lieu of the physical structure itself.
I am originally from Toledo, Ohio. Home is in the home and gardens that my husband and I have crafted together over the past 11 years in the small historic village of Perrysburg on the Maumee River. Every room and every special space reflects something that we love, something that we dreamed about, something that we built together. Two places within that home are the closest to my heart--our front hallway, which has floor to ceiling windows and looks out over our front garden that is filled with flowers and wildlife and reminds us of our commitment to the land. The other special place is my studio, also with floor to ceiling windows, which is where I create my botanical art that reflects the peace and healing of the natural world. If there is heaven on earth, we have surely found it!
ReplyDeleteMe: born and raised in Wellsville, NY—a small town south of Buffalo.
ReplyDeleteHome is where my heart is—and my heart is divided. There is the home of Now, and the homes of Memory. Each of them treasured for comfort given.
Where am I from? St. Louis, though I was born elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteWhere is home? Home is a dream. An ideal that I have never known. I imagine it to be a safe haven, a warm bed and a place where memories are made with family and friends. A place where people chatter, laugh, love, and cry. A place where people rely on one another, care, are interested in you and support you. A place that is cozy and a place to relax and rejuvenate. A dream that will never be reality for me.
Home for me has always been “Missouri,” in the sense that when I see the Ozark landscape again, after traveling, I feel that sense of home. Specifically, though, Washington, MO, where I grew up feels so deeply familiar that it touches me, years later—and I love my current neighborhood, Hi-Pointe DeMun in a similar, but different way. Did you ever read the chapter “Dulce Domun” from WIND IN THE WILLOWS? It’s all about that intense, almost animal connection to “home.” In that case, it’s a specific HOUSE, and I feel that same thing, too. Wrote this poem about it:
ReplyDeleteLIKE A WOMAN FAST ASLEEP UPON THE GRASS
To a torn heart uncomforted by human nearness a room
may open almost human arms, and the being to whom
no four walls mean more than any others, is, at such hours,
expatriate everywhere. -- Edith Wharton, House of Mirth
Your home is something that you come to take
for granted, like your heart. It has its beats.
It closes round your world when you are gone,
reopens at your key’s command. It unfolds slowly,
room by room each morning—light within
each chamber beckoning, freshly painted walls
as soft and lambent as the folds inside a shell.
It knows the size of you, the shape of you,
the look of your skin. Feels lived within, like you,
or not. Solid and safe, like you—or sometimes not.
Your house curls round you like a woman fast asleep
upon the grass after a family picnic. You’re tired
and cranky, little, so you nuzzle in beside her,
join the nap. Later, after everyone has gone, will she
remember? Will she even dimly know that it was you
she held in her strong, bare arms that summer day,
safe and dreaming, the two of you that afternoon,
and many a day in sun and rain and storm thereafter?
Carol Niederlander
I love all of the comments that I've received, and I'm grateful to have received a poem, too. Thanks so much, Carol!
ReplyDelete