Twenty-seven years ago, I was driving down 95 South from Dulles Airport toward Richmond, heading for Williamsburg and Busch Gardens with my children. Jessica was sixteen and David twelve. Virginia’s lush greenery lined the highway, and traffic swirled around us. Then something wondrous happened. All sound and images faded except for the trees and sky. I smelled and heard their colors, hues of green and blue. Time and space seemed suspended. A gentle breeze from an unknown source caressed my face and raised the hairs on my arms. I relaxed my hands on the steering wheel. An inaudible, deep voice boomed inside my head. This is home. This is home. Hearing that voice—the loudest I’d ever heard—I woke as from a reverie. Who? What? How? I asked. The reality of 95 South returned. I told Jessica and David about the voice, what it said, and my astonishment. This is home? We live in Texas; we’re on vacation. I don’t remember my children having any reaction, except maybe, “Oh, Mom...” Compared to Busch Garden’s Loch Ness Monster and Big Bad Wolf roller coasters, the voice I heard and the time lapse I’d experienced probably didn’t seem like a big deal. But it turned out to be a very big deal. Seven years later, I was living and working in Baltimore—and falling in love with a man from Virginia. Yesterday, we celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary. This is home. (Scene excerpted and adapted from my memoir Wisdom Builds Her House, releasing in early 2024)
We built our last family home when I was nine. The wall intercoms and the huge open floor plan seemed luxurious and there were ten acres to explore. In hindsight, it wasn't extraordinary, but it was nice and it was home. Mom was fastidious and always updating the décor to the height of suburban eighties fashion. Dad started his own award winning business. On occasion, others lived with us for a while. It was always welcoming. When I moved home to have my son, we lived in my old room until we began renovating the enormous basement to build an office on one side and an apartment on the other. We had already built a small “Tudor” cottage in the front yard for me to paint and teach art classes, which was going well, but the business had some hiccups that heavily impacted the family. Mom went to work in retail. I had good commissions but not the time or energy for DIY projects so the house started to deteriorate. Eventually it was under foreclosure and we were scrambling to decide what to salvage and rescue, as water was spraying out of pinhole leaks in the copper pipes along the ceiling in our disastrous, unfinished living space. It makes my heart ache to think that that is what my son recalls as home, and even more so to know that he still drives back to look at it and mourn, hoping to buy it back one day.
Ok I have to tell you my husband Dave is constantly on youtube looking at properties overseas. And of course we have seriously considered Spain. What we see on youtube is a lot more bang for your buck over there. Houses they show are well over half what we would pay here in the states comparable. I have read about all those abandoned homes and towns in Spain. It seem that the majority of the population, the people with the money are concentrated in Barcelona, Madrid and along the coast.
I do also remember your mother telling us when we visited in 06, her retirement money went a lot further in Spain. The states are becoming so unaffordable anymore.
When we moved, I pictured myself on the adventures I’d dreamed of. A new city every few months, my feet dusty from exploring, flitting like dandelion fluff rather than rooting into any one spot. I didn’t expect to long for the ground.
We squeezed what we could into six jumbo suitcases, and I surprised myself with my attachment to our things. They meant little to me in the apartment they’d cluttered for the past five years. But almost two years after we traded our NYC 2-bed for a beachfront casita, I miss our photos on the walls, my books, the clothes I shoved into the trashcan hours before our flight. I miss our food scale, still picture its blue light shining through the garbage bag like a feeble voice crying out as we re-weighed each suitcase.
I know (I tell myself) that home is not a food scale. We can hang our photos, find new favorites. We know (we tell ourselves) that we can bring home, make home. The six suitcases are empty but whenever I’m surprised by something we didn’t bring, I want to open them and search the corners, see if any fragments of home are hiding there.
I said I’d lay down 6 month’s rent in cash to sweeten the odds of my application. It worked. A call received a couple days later, and the place was mine. It was my name on the lease, my first official residence after years on the road. A new start. The 101 Freeway hummed just behind the apartment, two miles north of downtown Los Angeles.
It was home for 5 years until a knock on the door one inconspicuous afternoon. My landlord, Louie, was accompanied by an inspector. “City says I’m not allowed to rent you this unit anymore. You’ll have to move out.” “Will do, Lou. But you’ve got to give me some time.” I shook my head. Then I learned about renter’s rights in California. No-fault eviction guaranteed a sum to allow an easier transition to another home. Turned out to be nine thousand dollars.
I moved to Koreatown with the love of my life and never looked back.
I came to this one place in Andalusia. I gifted myself this trip, consisting of a 5-day ultra-run, after having completed my PhD. Before that, I read Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist", and my journey corresponded to the journey of the protagonist Santiago. "Pay attention to the place where you will cry. For in that place I too will be, and there your treasure lies buried." So says a dialogue between Santiago and his heart. And I began to cry in that place. It was a kind of crying I did not experience before. Not tears of sadness, joy or anger, but an indescribable shaking deep inside the heart. I decided to buy a house right there.
Since then, I try to spend as much time there as possible. When I come back, unlock my front door and enter my house, it's as if I've never been away. And when I lock my front door, leave the house and this place, it's like pulling a flower in bloom, including its roots, out of the ground. I have the feeling of being connected to this place. I am at home.
In two days I will make the same journey once again. I am curious to see what my heart will tell me this time.
A few years ago, with the pandemic, we moved back to the town in Maine where I grew up, where my 88 year old father still lives. Biking the streets around the college I see on the signs, so many names of my fathers' old teaching colleagues and poker buddies. The Greason Pool must be named after Al Greason, the tall balding guy, the TOM SETTLEMIRE COMMUNITY GARDEN, the Beckwith Music Library, I remember Bob Beckwith, and his daugther Claudia, who was in my brother's class at school. My father’s girlfriend asked my father if he knew the “Settllemire Community Garden" and he said "Well I knew Tom Settlemire". He was probably thinking that was even better, the real McCoy, but she was frustrated, wanting to tell him about an upcoming event happening at the community garden. People who didn’t grow up here, people 'from away' as they say in Maine, must hear these names as the actual names of the places, not as the names of real people, people who played poker together or taught at the college, people who all went out to lunch together, filling a noisy table with beers and burgers, maybe a crabmeat sandwich, names that are now just posing as the static names of places.
Twenty-seven years ago, I was driving down 95 South from Dulles Airport toward Richmond, heading for Williamsburg and Busch Gardens with my children. Jessica was sixteen and David twelve. Virginia’s lush greenery lined the highway, and traffic swirled around us. Then something wondrous happened. All sound and images faded except for the trees and sky. I smelled and heard their colors, hues of green and blue. Time and space seemed suspended. A gentle breeze from an unknown source caressed my face and raised the hairs on my arms. I relaxed my hands on the steering wheel. An inaudible, deep voice boomed inside my head. This is home. This is home. Hearing that voice—the loudest I’d ever heard—I woke as from a reverie. Who? What? How? I asked. The reality of 95 South returned. I told Jessica and David about the voice, what it said, and my astonishment. This is home? We live in Texas; we’re on vacation. I don’t remember my children having any reaction, except maybe, “Oh, Mom...” Compared to Busch Garden’s Loch Ness Monster and Big Bad Wolf roller coasters, the voice I heard and the time lapse I’d experienced probably didn’t seem like a big deal. But it turned out to be a very big deal. Seven years later, I was living and working in Baltimore—and falling in love with a man from Virginia. Yesterday, we celebrated our seventeenth wedding anniversary. This is home. (Scene excerpted and adapted from my memoir Wisdom Builds Her House, releasing in early 2024)
We built our last family home when I was nine. The wall intercoms and the huge open floor plan seemed luxurious and there were ten acres to explore. In hindsight, it wasn't extraordinary, but it was nice and it was home. Mom was fastidious and always updating the décor to the height of suburban eighties fashion. Dad started his own award winning business. On occasion, others lived with us for a while. It was always welcoming. When I moved home to have my son, we lived in my old room until we began renovating the enormous basement to build an office on one side and an apartment on the other. We had already built a small “Tudor” cottage in the front yard for me to paint and teach art classes, which was going well, but the business had some hiccups that heavily impacted the family. Mom went to work in retail. I had good commissions but not the time or energy for DIY projects so the house started to deteriorate. Eventually it was under foreclosure and we were scrambling to decide what to salvage and rescue, as water was spraying out of pinhole leaks in the copper pipes along the ceiling in our disastrous, unfinished living space. It makes my heart ache to think that that is what my son recalls as home, and even more so to know that he still drives back to look at it and mourn, hoping to buy it back one day.
Ok I have to tell you my husband Dave is constantly on youtube looking at properties overseas. And of course we have seriously considered Spain. What we see on youtube is a lot more bang for your buck over there. Houses they show are well over half what we would pay here in the states comparable. I have read about all those abandoned homes and towns in Spain. It seem that the majority of the population, the people with the money are concentrated in Barcelona, Madrid and along the coast.
I do also remember your mother telling us when we visited in 06, her retirement money went a lot further in Spain. The states are becoming so unaffordable anymore.
Maybe we'll be neighbors someday.😃
When we moved, I pictured myself on the adventures I’d dreamed of. A new city every few months, my feet dusty from exploring, flitting like dandelion fluff rather than rooting into any one spot. I didn’t expect to long for the ground.
We squeezed what we could into six jumbo suitcases, and I surprised myself with my attachment to our things. They meant little to me in the apartment they’d cluttered for the past five years. But almost two years after we traded our NYC 2-bed for a beachfront casita, I miss our photos on the walls, my books, the clothes I shoved into the trashcan hours before our flight. I miss our food scale, still picture its blue light shining through the garbage bag like a feeble voice crying out as we re-weighed each suitcase.
I know (I tell myself) that home is not a food scale. We can hang our photos, find new favorites. We know (we tell ourselves) that we can bring home, make home. The six suitcases are empty but whenever I’m surprised by something we didn’t bring, I want to open them and search the corners, see if any fragments of home are hiding there.
I said I’d lay down 6 month’s rent in cash to sweeten the odds of my application. It worked. A call received a couple days later, and the place was mine. It was my name on the lease, my first official residence after years on the road. A new start. The 101 Freeway hummed just behind the apartment, two miles north of downtown Los Angeles.
It was home for 5 years until a knock on the door one inconspicuous afternoon. My landlord, Louie, was accompanied by an inspector. “City says I’m not allowed to rent you this unit anymore. You’ll have to move out.” “Will do, Lou. But you’ve got to give me some time.” I shook my head. Then I learned about renter’s rights in California. No-fault eviction guaranteed a sum to allow an easier transition to another home. Turned out to be nine thousand dollars.
I moved to Koreatown with the love of my life and never looked back.
I came to this one place in Andalusia. I gifted myself this trip, consisting of a 5-day ultra-run, after having completed my PhD. Before that, I read Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist", and my journey corresponded to the journey of the protagonist Santiago. "Pay attention to the place where you will cry. For in that place I too will be, and there your treasure lies buried." So says a dialogue between Santiago and his heart. And I began to cry in that place. It was a kind of crying I did not experience before. Not tears of sadness, joy or anger, but an indescribable shaking deep inside the heart. I decided to buy a house right there.
Since then, I try to spend as much time there as possible. When I come back, unlock my front door and enter my house, it's as if I've never been away. And when I lock my front door, leave the house and this place, it's like pulling a flower in bloom, including its roots, out of the ground. I have the feeling of being connected to this place. I am at home.
In two days I will make the same journey once again. I am curious to see what my heart will tell me this time.
A few years ago, with the pandemic, we moved back to the town in Maine where I grew up, where my 88 year old father still lives. Biking the streets around the college I see on the signs, so many names of my fathers' old teaching colleagues and poker buddies. The Greason Pool must be named after Al Greason, the tall balding guy, the TOM SETTLEMIRE COMMUNITY GARDEN, the Beckwith Music Library, I remember Bob Beckwith, and his daugther Claudia, who was in my brother's class at school. My father’s girlfriend asked my father if he knew the “Settllemire Community Garden" and he said "Well I knew Tom Settlemire". He was probably thinking that was even better, the real McCoy, but she was frustrated, wanting to tell him about an upcoming event happening at the community garden. People who didn’t grow up here, people 'from away' as they say in Maine, must hear these names as the actual names of the places, not as the names of real people, people who played poker together or taught at the college, people who all went out to lunch together, filling a noisy table with beers and burgers, maybe a crabmeat sandwich, names that are now just posing as the static names of places.