home, coming.

I was probably 15 years old when the brilliant Jon Fox was quite upset with someone who was trying to relive childhood, I suppose. "You can never go home." he said. I'm not sure, but I might bet that he would still believe this to be true.
It felt so true. It was the first time I had ever heard anyone say it out loud, though I had suspected it, felt it acutely and I knew it wasn't just about returning to a house. He seemed to me to be goading, yes goading, us all onto greater things than crawling back to the skeletal remains of some childhood fantasy about safe places and familiar spaces.

For years already I had wondered if home existed; I had tried on homelessness and it wasn't quite right but there was something very wrong about the custody shuffling back and forth after my parents' divorce. There were long trips and multiple locations we were taught to call home. In one home we referred to the other home as though it belonged to someone else. Home was supposed to be the word assigned to something that was mine or conjure an image of ownership and stability. Instead the word was confusing, distressing and never stuck to one house the way it should have.

Then I grew up as much as I could and moved out entirely and things only got worse.
You know the feeling: old teddy bears remain in one attic and old books in another. Favorite clothes are fine stuffed in bags that you carry with you from one new bedroom to the next. Maybe you have some towels and a hammer you've acquired along the way. Maybe a good school or a new job waits in the next town or, even better, a lover will be there to kiss you when you arrive. And so you go and you take what you can and you figure home is where you make it.

Those were days when I figured I would be fine like a snail and carry home with me. In fact, all I carried was the idea of home. I fantasized about walls to hang pictures on and the sounds of a house settling into its foundation as I drifted off to sleep. I yearned for familiarity to rush in and hoped for comfort to follow just as quickly.

Now I am settling down. I have stopped searching, stopped trying to define the word or make it stick to a new place merely because I pay rent on time and turn the heat on when I want to. Even if all my clothes and books are here, even if my records are safe and I know how long it takes the oven to preheat, even if I am enjoying the street sounds and recognize the song of the neighbor birds...it isn't easy to make the word home work here. Don't get me wrong, I feel safer here than I have felt anywhere. I enjoy this little space with all its gentle quirks and I am proud to call it mine. But I just don't know if it is home.

I call it that. If you asked me where I am, I would tell you I am at home. But that is mostly so you would know my geographic location, not so you would know how safe I feel or how long I intend to stay here.

So there is the problem of feeling home and being home and then there is the problem of love.

When I leave town, my father always tells me he loves me.
Then there was one day he didn't say he loved me. He didn't have to
instead he said
you
can
always
come home.
and I was not shocked, not surprised but I sure as hell had never imagined that possibility in that way before that moment.

And I thought it over quite a lot because I always believed what Jon had said. What is more, I still do. You can never go back in time. You should never expect your parents to take care of you the way they once tried to--you'll only be disappointed. But you do deserve to feel safe, to be protected and to most of us that means finding a place where someone or something will remind you that you are loved.
For a blessed few of us that is a place that we can find. For even fewer of us it is a place we can return to and for about two or three of the 6 billion of us on the planet it is a place we are invited to return to.

So if you ever wonder how it is that I am strong enough to do what I do or say what I say or live the brave life I live. If you ever think I am a weirdo, or a crazy, or (God bless you!) special you can trust it is because, well, I am. I am not like most people who can't find home, can't return to one they knew, or have never been invited back.

I'm not telling you this to brag or to give you the impression that it would be easy and glorious for me to go home. I am not the prodigal and probably never will be so please set aside any resentment brewing about some kind of backwards heroics. I am telling you all this because it explains a lot about me and how I keep hoping to be helpful to you. See, generosity begets generosity and that is why it is possible for me to at least hope that one day I will be brave enough to give when I want to give and take when I want to take with a degree of careful consistency and heartfelt nurture.

Jon was right. You can never go home because the building and the people in it just won't be the same. But to know where love is and then to be invited toward it--call it home if you want to--that is what really matters. And that is precisely the problem: being invited home or rather being assured that there is a place in which someone can and will love you when you need it most, or protect you if you want protection, is just as much a homecoming as an arrival on your parents doorstep.

When I feel desperately alone I try to name it and I find myself saying: "I want to go home." But I'm not thinking of a bedroom or walls or a front door I once knew; I'm thinking of doing anything to avoid the wild world in which I live mostly out of doors and sometimes out of sorts. And the most comforting responses to date called me back to a warm embrace... they had nothing to do with something you could rent or own because they were about right here, right now and love.