Home, Comforting Home
an older essay on a day where home is the only place I want to be
(Note: This essay was written several years ago. I am still under the weather with a head full of rocks. I’m just so happy to be home today with only a couple of Zoom clients for work. When not working, I’ve been reading a lot in my comfy chair while I’ve been sick. Reading Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver right now. Have you read it? I read it maybe 20+ years and it has been lovely to revisit it again. Would love to know what you are reading right. Anyway…on to the essay from a Kateri of the past, that still feels oddly present.) (Also: note about Ireland…funny how my dream came true through my son’s life. He now lives in Ireland with his family, so my heart lives there, and gets to visit there, after all.)
The land is love. In the land we can find beauty and grace, comfort and solace, nourishment for our bodies, shelter for our families. We take care of it, or we don’t, and it’s still there, holding us up. Oh, it can turn on us, grow ugly and polluted if we’ve neglected it too long. We can fear it, too, as it can be inhospitable and unwelcoming at times. Still, we can learn from it every day, and without it we would not exist. The land is love. And for each and every one of us, there is some landscape, some place, that we love best. Our soul’s home. It might be concrete and skyscrapers, vast prairies with tall grasses oscillating in the breeze, rugged mountains that dwarf the sky, a pristine beach with swaying palms and water blue as the heavens it reflects, or even the passionate and torrid air of a Louisiana bayou---we all have a special place we feel most like ourselves, a place that restores us. Maybe we like to be there in solitude, or perhaps we like to enjoy it while immersed in a sea of people. Often it’s not the place where we live, so we spend a whole lot of time dreaming about it and planning ways to get there.
These are the places that inspire us, awe us, put fire in our bellies like nowhere else on earth. They move us and dwell inside of us in ways that we deeply understand, but have a very hard time expressing. It’s like true love. It is love. I know where my place is, and I’m sure you know yours, too. Our places are burned into our beings, whether we realise it, or not.
When I was younger I had a terrible case of wanderlust. I would study maps, pencil the routes I would one day take around the world, circle places I would visit, cities I would one day live in, just for a short time, to experience all the parts of the world that called me to them. I read travel narratives about places like the South of France, the Ring of Kerry, Sahara Desert, the Steppes, the Arctic and the spice trail. I longed to taste the foods, smell the air, immerse myself in cultures so different from my own, to know the people and places so foreign to me at that time in my life. I wanted adventure and mystery and romance and the life of a gypsy. Wherever I roamed would be my home. I still have that ability in me, to blend in and feel comfortable wherever I go, with whomever I meet, but somehow the sirens of wanderlust have been muffled in me. I don’t have the unquenchable longing to journey far away. And I think it’s because I finally fell in love. The kind of love where I feel the ache of leaving my beloved place as I soon I can see it in my rearview mirror. The girl who never looked back in her youth is now the one feeling what homesickness is really all about. Yes, I’m in love with my home, with the land right around me; it’s the landscape of my dreams.
How is it that a girl from Arizona and Texas who has traveled the world comes to find herself in love with the rolling hills, fields, creeks and woods of Western New York? I used to think my soul’s place was in Ireland, or the Wiltshire and Lake Districts of England, but now there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t feel some kind of intense surge of joy that we can feel when we are soaked through to the bone with true love for something. It is a rare morning, throughout all four seasons, that I don’t rise, look out my windows and think, “This is the most beautiful place in the world.” Everyone has a different sense of beauty, and I’ve been known to say those words when taking in a spectacular sunset on Lake Michigan, or watching the clouds roll over Mount Sopras in the Rockies. It can be an “in the moment” kind of feeling, to be sure. It is the beauty of home that I ache for, though. From the moment I leave it, I’m longing to return. And it makes me wonder, is it my heart’s way of protecting itself from the realisation that I never will make it to all those places I once circled on my maps? Or is it that my heart finally woke up and realised what it has wanted all along?
“I felt a pang -- a strange and inexplicable pang that I had never felt before. It was homesickness. Now, even more than I had earlier when I'd first glimpsed it, I longed to be transported into that quiet little landscape, to walk up the path, to take a key from my pocket and open the cottage door, to sit down by the fireplace, to wrap my arms around myself, and to stay there forever and ever.”
― Alan Bradley, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag
Think for a moment of the one place you feel most alive, a place where you feel like your authentic self. How often do you get to go there? I used to feel that way about Ireland, even more so after I finally visited there for two glorious weeks. I do still dream about going back, and I bet one day I will, but I no longer have that sense of “Life is too short. I only get one shot. How will I ever get to live there?” that I used to have. Oh, I have plenty of those kinds of anxieties about other things, but they don’t have to do with place. And I still wonder, is it just a form of settling into reality that keeps me so in love with home, the place I love so much?
Perhaps it’s because it is what I know best. I’ve lived on this land, in this house for almost three decades now, longer than I’ve been any other place in my entire life. Familiarity can be such a comfort, hey? Certainly there are other places with rolling hills, fields, woods and gentle streams that are just as beautiful, that also capture my heart. Every time I visit New Hampshire, I feel that kind of love when I am there. But still, I long for home. Maybe I should cease the questioning and just know how lucky I am to dwell where I’m so connected. It really is my haven.
This past week I allowed myself to fall into that deep chasm of anxiety that I tend to find when I am overwhelmed. Instead of launching into action I become paralysed, and the only place I want to be is home and in solitude. It’s like I have to turn the world off for a while, retreat into the place I know best. Surround myself with what brings me comfort. If I pay attention the signals and realise that I need it, I’m usually much better within a day, maybe two, and ready to take everything on again. This week it proved itself true. I said no to social activities, I organised my work and put it aside, and I fell into the arms of home. A wonderful novel, good tea, long baths with a sip or three of Jaegermeister, a stack of art books, snuggling with four cats, time at my table in the woods, and lazy walks at the farm were just what I needed. And it’s okay. It’s exactly okay, for me.
Unplugging from the world can seem like a luxury, but often it is a necessity. I know I’ve felt guilt over it in the past from the reaction of friends about my need to retreat into my fox hole. I know I am in awe of others who never seem to take a day or even a moment to recharge when things get harried. They just keep skipping along. They make me feel, for a moment, like a pansy-assed failure, but it’s just not true. The important thing is to do what feels best to each of us. What works for us and us alone. To find what helps us to clear the muck, refuel and be ready to begin again.
We all have our things that overwhelm us. Worrying about our kids, loved ones, or about our health. Getting housework done. Money. Finding time for friends. Wondering when the next job will come in. Fretting over the state of the world, war, hunger, pollution, the financial collapse of once prosperous countries. I know I spend valuable time wondering what the heck I will make of my life. It’s so hard to break out of this cycle of worries, but it’s exactly why we need to find our place of comfort. And that place will look different to each of us. It may even mean heading to the city to be among crowds of people and streets teeming with life while juggling six different jobs and volunteering for five different charities. Some folks thrive on that. It doesn’t matter. We just need to find our own place that restores us and to support others when they find what brings them back to centre, too. Mine just happens to be to retreat into my turtle shell, my home and the land that surrounds it.
I’m not sure what falling in love and finding your heart’s landscape has to do with ways that we cope with stress, but they go hand in hand for me. I love my home and I love my solitude, but I don’t stay in either place forever. All I know is that they are there for me when I need them most. Home, comfortable home.
(Note from Present Kateri: I would love to know where your place is. Let me know in the comments below.)
You know, it's funny how we often search for our "soul's place" in far-off lands, when sometimes it's right under our noses. Maybe the real adventure is finding the magic in the mundane, the extraordinary in the ordinary.
I recognize myself so much in that need for a sancuary. I do find that sense of calm and connection and grounding in my home that I share with my love and our almost 5 year old daughter. It is just a 3 room apartment but here we are surrounded by books, art, and beautiful furniture that we have (mostly) found second hand throughout the years, and a large kitchen flooded with light where we spend most of our time. Outside is a busy road which reminds me we are not alone, but also lots of trees that I follow throughout the seasons.
But I am also lucky enough to feel grounded and connected in a lot of places. In my studio across the street from where we live where I design my jewellery but also explore other creative practices. That is my creative sanctuary where I am free to explore and let things take time, it is also completely just my own, here I can find solitude. At our allotment, that has ended up much more of a garden than a vegetable patch, here I find comfort and it has helped me though some of the most challenging times of my life. And in the summer house by the sea that me and my partner rent each summer, and have been for years and years, a house that is not ours but still feels like home.
I find that as I age it is much easier to feel grounded, comforted and connected wherever I am. If I bring my notebook, a good book to read, my computer and perhaps some art supplies, I can make many places feel like home. I guess it’s because I’m more grounded in myself. The important thing for me is that it is calm so I can think at my own pace, in crowded rooms and at social gatherings I almost always end up in the least busy room and quite soon find myself longing to leave, however much I love the people being there. I also prefer to have water nearby, I have almost always lived close to the ocean and when I haven’t I have almost felt trapped, less connected, less free. I don’t need to see the water, but I need to know that it’s there.
I do also dream of a house though. With a small garden of our own. But not in the country side, here, in the city, close to the people I love and where life is easy. No need for a car or long travel distances. Walking distance to the studio and to my daughters school. We cannot afford this now but I’m in no rush. I am happy where I am. And I love to be able to have dreams for what’s ahead.
I havn’t read Kingsolver, have to look her up! Right now I’m reading Richard Powers ’The Time of Our Singing’, his ’Overstory’ is one of my all-time favourite books. After that I am looking so much forward to reading the fourth part of Karl Ove Knausgårds series ’The Morning Star’. I’m also longing to revisit Maja Lundes’s series that starts with ’The History of Bees’.
Thank you for sharing Kateri, and thank you for always inspiring <3