HOME

I recently was in california for a week. It was beautiful as usual. I was nervous to go back home. We finally arrived after a long drive and as I walked the kids out to the beach I looked back at my house and realized that my Grandma wasn't upstairs. For the first time EVER she wasn't there. I realized then that I feel like it's all slowly slipping away from me. How can something that seemed so permanent suddenly be fading so fast? It feels almost like an illusion, like its all falling out of focus and there's nothing I can do. And now I see how much a part of ME this place is because I am being asked to let it go. How does that even work? How do you come to terms with a part of you being torn away? I suppose that I should feel thankful for having it as long as I did. I just wish I knew how to handle it all.

Last night I pulled out a letter I wrote to one of my favorite essayists. I Wrote it before I was actually faced with the impossible task at hand, for a school assignment. It's more fitting now than ever.

Dear Mr. Eiseley,
I recently read your essay Entitled The Brown Wasps and absolutely loved it! Besides the fact that the whole concept of this essay is deeply profound, it was the delivery of the idea that first grabbed me. You write so beautifully about the subtleties of nature. As I read, I imagined you sitting in silence for lengths of time, being the observer of small things. Things that most of us pass by without a glance. The brown wasps lingering about their nests till the frost of winter finally took them. The field mouse that burrowed into the soil of your fern plant as it tried to recreate “a remembered field (p.240)”. The pigeons returning to the abandoned rail line in hopes of finding a past life, nevermore to return. I wonder, where did such a distinct awareness of the world come from? What a gift you have, for seeing true principles in their simplest form and sharing them through your writing!

The notion that there is an attachment of the spirit to a grouping of events in time really resonates with me, particularly these lines: “It is the place that matters, the place at the heart of things... We cling to a time and a place because without them man is lost, not only man but life(p.240).” This concept reminded me of a scene in my favorite movie Garden State where the main character thoughtfully says:


 “You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? Even though you have some place where you can put your stuff, that idea of home is gone . . . You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself. You know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”

You describe this in your own life as you wrote about a cottonwood tree that you and your father had planted together when you were a child. And to find years later that it no longer existed must have been somewhat of a devastation to you. I sensed this when you wrote that “...it was part of my orientation in the universe and I could not survive without it (p.245)”. It wasn’t the tree itself that you couldn’t survive without. It was the symbol of the tree, and what that symbol represented to you about your relationship with your father. We all need something to keep us steady in the storms of life. These symbols are suspended in time because they live on in our mind and our hearts. I have always liked the idea that we leave some kind of imprint on time and space even if it only exists because it’s alive within us. An energy like a fingerprint, as we move through this world and on into the next. Or as you stated, “We are all part of an elusive world that existed no where and yet everywhere (p.245).”

I couldn’t help but ponder on my symbols and what they mean to me. I often find myself thinking about the home I was raised in, it is the same house my mother was raised in, the house my grandfather built all on his own. This place has been a touchstone to my reality since I can remember. It is a symbol of generations, of connections, of childhood. Even the thought that someday this house will cease to exist, creates a feeling of dread in my very core. As if I myself or a part of myself will cease to exist along with it. I imagine standing there while the world carries on; but I cannot, simply because I know not how. So I too can speak for the field mouse, the wasps, a flock of pigeons and yourself. “We were all out of touch but somehow permanent, It was the world that had changed(p.245).”

Sincerely,
Megan Kelly On a brighter note while I was feeling the security of home and childhood slipping away I was given a tender mercy from God. My Childhood best friend Davina, whom I had not seen in 12 years contacted me the day before I left for California! She lives in Vegas and so I stopped and spend some very meaningful time with her. It was just like before, we always just clicked. I leaned on that a lot while I was at the beach house last week. Dwelling on my reunion with her rather than the separation to come. She is a God sent.