As 2012 is drawing to a close, I am finally going to write a couple of posts I've had swimming around in my head for a month or so. Today's post is one borne out of a conversation I had with a dear friend a month or two ago about home.
Home. Such a cozy, comforting word. A word with so many meanings to each person. The house you live in. The town you grew up in (or the country you are from, in some cases). The place where your parent(s) still live. Your family.
Our conversation was about the upcoming holidays, and how stressful it can be when you are the family member in charge of planning and executing all the family gatherings that happen at Thanksgiving and Christmas. When what we really want is to just pack up and go over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house, where she has cozy beds and delicious food waiting for us, and we just have to show up and wrap ourselves in the love.
My friend expressed a feeling that I think many of us probably having during this time of year - that longing for "home" that is a place we can go back to, the house we grew up in, where parent or parents welcome us into the familiar warmth and the surroundings that are an integral part of who we are, where we can drop all our cares at the door and just "be" for a while.
My friend's personal situation is such that she is, in her early 40s, already that person, the person whose home is the "home" that the family comes to for holiday gatherings. Her parents are long-divorced, grandparents gone, one parent living with her and other parent and various siblings living out of state. So the holidays for her family here are celebrated at her home, which means she is the one everyone looks to for whatever meals and gatherings may take place.
I have a similar situation - both parents gone, all grandparents gone, only my mother in law left. We celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas on my husband's side at his mother's tiny home, because it's what she wants, and so for me, that is my holiday "home." But it's not "my" home. There hasn't been that sort of home for me in many, many years (not since my grandma passed away, as her house was the one where my father was born and every Christmas of my childhood was spent at her house).
My parents divorced when I was 10, and so from that age forward, my "home" was several different places, as my mom and I moved several times before she remarried. My dad remarried when I was 13. So I had two homes, but neither were the home I grew up in, as we moved so much when I was a kid. My friend had a similar experience growing up, living in several states and numerous homes.
I still get emotional when I hear Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas. I'm not sure why, but that song brings up fond memories of my mom and I wrapping Christmas gifts and decorating the house and baking for the holidays. My childhood had a lot of baggage and dysfunction, but there were some wonderful memories and great times and many of them are around Christmas, so those memories are a bittersweet reminder of what I miss when I think of my mom during the holidays. Because, messy and dysfunctional as our life was, my mom was "home" to me.
So when I read of people going back home to the house their parents have lived in for 40 years, where their childhood bedroom is still intact and they can sleep there on Christmas Eve, I feel a twinge of sadness that I was never able to experience that. I love to watch holiday movies where families have that kind of "home." But that is Hollywood fiction, and the reality for most of the people I know is that their "home" at the holidays is rarely the kind we see in movies.
I hope that our house is the place where our kids and grandkids think of as "home" for Christmas. We all live near each other (except the college son who still comes home for a couple of weeks from out of town), so there is no extended stay. And we have built a tradition of Christmas breakfast which used to be at our home each year, but now is rotated between our home, our daughter's home, and her in-laws' home. So our Christmas morning tradition is not always at my "home" but it is alway with family so it is "home" for all of us to be together.
Life seems so transient these days. People marry, divorce, move around, change jobs, change homes, change cities. Life moves at a faster and faster pace. And so how do we find "home" in the midst of life as it is for us now? I think we must create "home" where we are. We must redefine what "home" means to us. Perhaps home is not so much a place, a geographical location, as it is a feeling, an emotion, a connection, a grounding. The indefinable feeling that comes when you are with those people who are your family - the ones who have to love you no matter what. The people who know you the best. The ones who don't care if you doze off on the couch and snore, who tease you when you make a mess trying to bake cookies, who mock you mercilessly for your love of Christmas movies and music (and I love them anyway, so there), who look forward to the family traditions you have created over the years. Home is where they have to let you in.
For me, more than anything else, "home" is my husband and children and grandchildren. We laugh together, we cry together, we know each other so well. It is the one place where I can totally be myself, and have no fear that someone will stop loving or liking me because of who I really am.
So if you are like so many of us of my generation and don't have the storybook home to go to at the holidays, with mom baking pies in the kitchen and dad building a lovely fire and reading the Christmas story from Luke in front of the tree with all the family gathered round just like every year, then make your own version of "home." Create your own place of refuge and comfort, with the people who make you feel most yourself and most comfortable, doing together whatever it is that makes you happy. Not what you see in a magazine article or on a home or cooking show, those places that present a ridiculously unrealistic picture of what home for the holidays should look like.
No one's life really looks like that. Life is messy. Life is unpredictable. Life is painful sometimes. Life rarely goes the way we wish it would - if it did, I'd be living in Leave It to Beaver-land and wearing my pearls all day long and I'd be practically perfect in every way. But instead, I'm messy, and foolish, and clumsy, and joyful, and silly, and fearful, and insecure, and curious, and full of love for the people who are my home. We all long for "home." It is part of who we are created to be as human beings - we crave connection, we crave stability, we crave belonging. But "home" is sometimes hard to find, sometimes disappointing, sometimes complicated. So we have to resolve to find "home" where we can and make it what we need.
I'm blessed beyond what I deserve, and though it is a total cliche, for me, for today, it's the most true thing. Home is where the heart is. My wish for you is that you may find your own version of "home" and that it will bring you comfort and joy, not just at Christmas, but all year long.
