Big Edie Beale in her ruinous home, "Grey Gardens," c. 1975, in front of her younger portrait. |
Now I feel like I'm on some kind of teeter-totter, not sure how or where things will land. Whatever it is, it's a bit wobbly and disconcerting. I keep telling myself that my mind and soul are preparing for 50, that seven-year cellular change at 49 (every seven years the body is supposed to slough away itself, as well as the psyche), or maybe even the confusion of early Alzheimer's. (Hey, there are days!)
We've been here four years this week (full time, pending the sale of our house in September 2008, back in New Hampshire, which it did, bittersweetly, despite the complete and total economic collapse that ensued that week.) There are days that I feel completely at home here in Kentucky and there are other times when I want to return to the homes that were. I suspect I would feel this way at this point in my life no matter where I was living. It's more a state of mind than a state of place but it is a state of being with which I need to reckon.
"Home should be an oratorio of the memory."
Henry Ward Beecher
My broody chicken mama and one of her chicks. |
Here, surrounded by the natural and private world of our farm, I find I feel at home with the little things. Discovering a bird's nest, admiring volunteer morning glories that have emerged along my chicken house from gardeners past, seeing a Mama chicken and her brood enjoying the yard for the first time, the lowing and bellowing of cattle. Farm life is hard and uncertain but nature provides a backdrop of what we can count on each year: the renewal of the world around us. Nature seems to make herself at home wherever she is and there is a constancy to that and a comfort.
We just moved our twenty-four year old daughter back to Kentucky for a transitional time before her fall job. I was amazed by the amount of stuff she had accumulated in four years but realize that when I was in my 20s, I, too, started on that path towards accumulation.
With each progressive move I have had more, not less. At fifty, it seems that we should start deaccessioning things, stuff, the past, old boxes of useless crap. That is my intention: reorganize, reshuffle, pitch, sort, repeat.
Little Edie Beale, in front of "Grey Gardens," c. 1975, East Hampton, New York. |
Little Edie Beale, who returned to her childhood home in her mid-20s and stayed on there with her aging mother, said it best: "It's very difficult to keep the line between the past and the present. You know what I mean? It's awfully difficult." [As quoted in the Maysles documentary, Grey Gardens, 1975.] My daughter and I watched this documentary the other day for the first time together: it was sad and haunting and we laughed at how things might be if we co-existed together for all of those decades! [I hadn't watched it since with friends back in New Hampshire in 2007: here's a blog post about that viewing.] Unlike Big Edie, I believe in theory that children need to leave the nest and find their own home in the world, too. But as Robert Frost wrote, "Home is the place that when you have to go there, they have to take you in." [From the poem, "Death of a Hired Man"] And we've all had to be taken in from time to time in our lives before going out into the world again.
"But whatever else home is–and however it entered our consciousness–it's a way of organizing space in our minds.
Home is home, and everything else is not home.
That's the way the world is constructed."
Verlyn Klinkenborg, "The Definition of Home,"
Smithsonian, May 2012.
Life provides that constant tussle between feeling at home where we are and longing for what has been. But as I approach fifty, I realize, too, that home can just be in the presence, or mere thought, of a dear friend or family member. A friend back in New England still visits the former homesite of her ancestors: the old house where she spent many summers is long gone but the site is still there, on the shoulder of a mountain, and family members still gather among the ruinous columns and gardens that long ago naturalized into the hillside. While visiting a few weeks ago, she treated a friend and I to a picnic there. In that very special spot it was a tonic to the soul to be able to breathe in the mountain again, the surrounding landscape, the distant hills to the west, and the company of friends on a glorious summer afternoon. For that brief time, all seemed right with the world as we connected with the place and each other.
My children and I outside of Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio (built in 1915 by my great-grandparents, F.A. & Gertrude Seiberling). Now they love to come here as much as I do. |
Home is as much a place in the mind as anything else and as much comfort as we might have in the world. We can visit former homes in our dreams, as I often do, or in our daytime wanderings or make a home wherever we are. We can be lonely in our homes, surrounded by loved ones, just as we can be homesick for the idea of home.
I suppose it doesn't have to be so complicated and yet, it is.
You come back when you're ready!
Catherine
ahh Catherine.
ReplyDeleteDoes it make you feel less alone to say that you are not alone?
More often than not i find that i am timesick rather than homesick.
Yes, Rene, it actually does. And timesick--I like that.
DeleteThis post has struck a chord with me on many aspects.I had never heard of the seven year sloughing idea before but i will use it as an excuse for the 'crazy' way I feel sometimes as i am in a 7 year right now. I hear you about the uncertainty of feelings in midlife.
ReplyDeleteHere is more, in briefly Googled-research form, on the 7-year thing. I am not surprised that Rudolf Steiner, father of anthroposophy (our kids went to a Waldorf preschool that we loved), had that idea, also: http://dreamhawk.com/body-and-mind/every-seven-years-you-change/
DeleteIt's an interesting concept and often when I've had pivotal 7-year periods (7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49) I've also lost old friends, gained new ones, and have had major seismic shifts in my life.
I marvel at how you echo my own heart and thoughts so closely!
ReplyDeleteI can relate to every word you wrote because I am living it now.
And yet it is. Oh, I relate... Destiny
ReplyDeleteAs I sit here in our "homeplace" I cannot help but wish you a fruitful search for your "homeplace", whether it's in mind and spirit or in body or both. I wish for you the contentment I feel among the memories of my ancestors and among the blessed days knowing my family is nearby.
ReplyDeleteThe Yosemite Cat House
What a great post. I had heard of Grey Gardens but hadn't connected the house to the Bouvier family. Midlife is a strange time, isn't it? The thoughts that surface aren't for the faint-hearted! The quote about home as a way of organising space is interesting. My present home here in England is now the place I've lived longer than any other in my life, but I still have feelings for my childhood and other family homes, so it's not as simple as 'home/not home'. I've lived mainly in the central and western US, though I visited the south east often in my 20s. New Hampshire, the NE and the ??what do you call that area where Kentucky is?? inland from the eastern seaboard? Anyhow, I've not spent time in either. I think we passed through Kentucky once because I remember looking for 'blue' grass. Between your lovely writing and your interest in pantries, I can see me reading here a lot.
ReplyDeleteBTW, have you read The Egg and I, by Betty MacDonald? It was a book my mother had and I loved it, though it is rather dated. It came to mind when reading the right side column here, where you mention becoming a farmwife-in-training in midlife. If you run across it you might enjoy the book.
ReplyDelete