Coming Home

One of my most treasured memories during college was coming home for the holidays. I would ride a Greyhound bus all night, transfer to a city bus in downtown LA at 5am, and walk a ½ mile to the home I was raised in. As I passed increasingly familiar yards and began to see the leaves and branches of trees in my mother’s garden, I could then hear pans clank through the window and smell something sweet and spicy wafting from the kitchen. The last thing I sensed before being enveloped in her warmth was a cry of excitement from inside as she spied me through a window. The chill edges of the world slipped away and I would laugh, and cry, and eat, and then sleep deeply all day in the softest of beds, waking again at dusk to the sound of more pans and the succulent scent of dinner. I felt as I had at every age as a child tucked warm under a winter comforter, deeply safe and loved, rooted in that timeless nourishing rhythm.

I have been searching for a home ever since I realized I could not stay with my mother forever. And when she died the remaining concept of home I had shattered as my family and its nourishing rhythms splintered apart. My main goal in college had been to travel so I could find a place to belong. I spent a semester in Italy, a summer in Cyprus, and a full year post-graduation in Scotland. I met amazing people who changed the way I saw the world. I fell in love with ancient Tuscan fields drenched with spring sunlight and brooding Highlands lurking in banks of fog. And I discovered in myself a resourceful resilience that has served me my entire adult life. But despite my love of these places and people, I felt deeply vulnerable and unsettled as an obvious foreigner. When 9-11 closed Heathrow, I knew I needed to get back to the place that felt closest to home while I still had the chance. I began to accept I may always feel like an outsider, and to take a chance at building a life where I was from.

The closest I’ve found to home in my adult life was in my partnership with Andy and in my studies at the gnostic school. I had a garden, husband, and two kitties to nurture, and orbiting that sense of purpose and comfort enabled me to both grieve deeply and dream broadly. The gnostic school provided a community of fellow students where I could share my ordeals, perform rituals, and sing kirtan. I was invigorated by a shared journey to verify universal truths through mindfulness, meditation, and dream yoga. But those homes both dissolved into restlessness and conflict that sent me back out into the world searching again, and carrying grief for what I had been denied and left behind.

A few years ago, as I gradually realized that the communities I was building around social work and volunteer management would also never fulfill my deeper need for home, I began to have recurring dreams of travel. In them, I would be heading abroad, but panicking as I found there were simply more and more things to pack and I would miss my train or fight. Or I would already be abroad, wandering a shimmering city, thrilled to be there and longing for more time. Often I would be at a rambunctious and thrilling party packed into a large house or a decadent cruise ship leaving or returning to port. My sister, who has always inspired me with her adventures and worldly knowledge, was often accompanying me. Some nights, I dreamed of a joyful reunion with my kitties, Ping and Ida, who I left in their home with Andy when we were divorced.

This week, all of these symbols came together in one powerful dream, influenced by my recovery work. I was at a house party, but my sister was running the show, refusing my input about what movie to watch. I comforted myself in the soothing affections of an over-weight, sweaty man who I was not attracted to. Ping and Ida were living in the house with my sister and I noticed they were both jumpy and unsettled. I felt heart-broken and began crying and shouting at my sister about what a terrible cat mom she was. With a poised and righteous contempt I had often seen in my mother but never before in her, my sister stiffened and without a word led me out the front door, locking me on the porch in my pajamas. I began to sob and shout again, this time in pain that she had disowned me. Then I realized we were living abroad and I had an open-ended plane ticket home. As I began searching for something to wear in the little I had with me, an Ethiopian girl I had known in high school approached. She thanked me on behalf of all the people of color living and working in the house for being the first person willing to stand up and speak out. Despite being abandoned and left with so little, I suddenly felt flooded with purpose and belonging, and excited to get home to the job and community that was all my own and waiting for me.

During this space between identities, I have felt determined to travel, taking my dreams as signs that there is something out in the world that I need to discover and experience alone. But now I begin to wonder if these dreams of travel are not literal, but metaphorical, inviting me to step outside of all that is familiar so that I can access that deeper awe of life and spiritual connection that I have previously found in my most lonely and challenging times. The experience I believe I will have through travel has been influenced by 15 years of sentimental memories, and the reality will likely be very different in the current climate of political and environmental upheaval. What I know is that the benefits always come with great sacrifice in terms of physical discomfort, logistical challenges, and emotional crises, all of which would threaten the growing serenity I have worked so hard to achieve.

The role that my sister has played as surrogate mother for me, and my symbolic rebellion against her in my dream, also makes me suspect that the home I have been searching for is the home of a child: a space of unconditional safety, guidance, and nurturing that is not realistic in a healthy, egalitarian adult relationship. My dream has since taken on the flavor of a rite of passage into full adulthood. In claiming my own voice and challenging comfort and safety that no longer served me, I was forced to take responsibility for meeting my own needs and discovered I already had a community and home.

What compels me to continue seeking out in the world is not an authentic desire for adventure or generosity, but a learned defense. If I keep moving, I can feel in control and stay ahead of loss. But when I let myself really envision my ideal place, I realize that the last thing in the world that I want is to lose the home I already have by being priced out or aimlessly chasing a dream abroad, in management, in education, or in the arms of some man I cannot see clearly. What I long for more than anything is to bask in this warm stew of cashiering, cleaning, cooking, writing, and sleeping with a dash of song, dance, and stretching. This rhythm is fertile ground for the silence I need to reach my truest home, one that no person or circumstance, even death, can threaten. I dissolve my skin into abundant space, burrowing my root deep into the bottomless earth and branching up into endless darkness, and rest in infinite love.

The solitude in this life I have built is a sturdy bridge so that every time I venture out to explore the demons and compulsions in my inner world, or our shared joys and griefs in the outer world, I know I can find my way back. That sea of weightless silence is my home. This sea of questioners and seekers is my home. Being interwoven with it all makes this delicious decision to simply be alive and aware vibrate with significance and a growing sense of curiosity and anticipation over what this home is preparing me to give.

Nancy

“My soul is from elsewhere – I am sure of that. And I intend to end up there.” – Rumi