[My] house is a very, very, very fine house–with two cats in the yard–life used to be so hard.
Graham Nash
Here’s a trope for you: an elderly woman–alone, of course–refuses to leave her home. She resists any number of pleas that it’s “for the best” to move somewhere safe, where she can get the care she needs. The roof needs shingling and the steps are crumbling. Hazy windows haven’t been washed in years; the garage gutter hangs crooked. (Do I even need to mention that there might be a cat or two involved?) The old woman’s bank account is almost as spare as her cupboard, but she is adamant: I. won’t. go.
I suspect that might very well be me someday.
I watched my mother turn over the idea of senior living, taking only one step forward before she took two steps back and decided she couldn’t leave the condo she’d lived in for over twenty-five years. The home where Sunday dinner was celebrated with chicken paprikas and cherry pie and jello salad, of course. And holidays, each with their own centerpiece and tablecloth on the dining room table. Gift bags and tissue paper spilling over the living room floor, be it birthday or Christmas. Flash back to the busyness of my young nieces visiting for the weekend from Ohio, then fast forward to her great-grandchildren inheriting the toy basket. The home where we celebrated her marriage to my step-dad was the same place she said goodbye to him before the funeral home carried him away. She recovered there, twice, from breast cancer, until that same funeral home carried her away, too.
I’ve written about home on these pages before. Two-hundred and twenty six times, if my blog’s search feature is accurate. My love affair with houses makes sense for a girl who moved sixteen times before she was forty. But right now I’m on a streak: twenty-five years in one place. I’ve sacrificed dearly to stay in this patchwork of partly-remodeled-half-repaired-falling-apart house, but despite the flaws I feel safe within its walls. Grounded. So many good memories were seeded here. Graduation parties, high school dances, wedding celebrations, three dogs and four cats, a gender reveal, grand-babies toddling, Christmas parties, summer barbecues. But there are ghosts, as well. These walls have also seen betrayal and estrangement and dreams shattered.
You’d think all that sorrow would cast a pall on my attachment.
But no. It’s simply home. My home.
It should be no surprise that I’m a sucker for a good book which has a home at its heart, and two have touched me recently. Kate Morton’s latest novel Homecoming is a sprawling story covering fifty years, several families, and more secrets than I could count. Two family homes loom large. Jess Turner leaves London to tend to her dying grandmother Nora in Australia. Jess, estranged from her mother Polly, was raised by Nora, doted upon and loved unconditionally. But Nora’s dying words set Jess on a quest to uncover a dark family secret–and in true Morton fashion, the secrets reveal themselves like a Russian nesting doll, one inside another inside another. She learns of a murder, an affair, a missing child, and lost love. Like so many of us, Polly and Jess are drawn to the very same house where tragedy changed the course of their lives. Fellowship Point by Alice Elliott Dark was another recent read that centered on home. (And secrets, too, come to think of it.) Children’s author Agnes Lee has spent nearly eighty summers on Fellowship Point in Maine. The land was owned jointly by her uncles, and each family’s home calls children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews back year after year. Those uncles are gone now, and one of the cousins wants to develop the property, breaking up what has held them together for generations. The novel is a reflection on why we hold so tightly to our origin stories and asks us that we consider to whom land really belongs. And if that’s not enough of a recommendation, the blurb says the novel “reads like a class nineteenth-century novel …” and the nearly six-hundred pages attest to that.
I know I’m not going anywhere soon. (And if I had my druthers I’d make that never.) But for now I’ll just add a cat or two, admire my shelf full of books, bask in the lamplight, and raise a glass of bourbon come evening. To my house. My very, very, very fine house.
This is my symphony 