when people speak of home, they speak or origins. the family into which they were born. people with the same blood. the same name. they speak of place. perhaps a house or a region, a landscape with known seasons. the trusted creek of wood staircases. fireplaces, back porches, the sidewalk responsible for innumerable skinned knees. and yes, it's nostalgic but the word home also connotes a feeling of continuation- a site of belonging and endurance, something impervious to ruin. something which, regardless of tribulation, remains. a fortress.
or am i romanticizing the concept?
perhaps i am imbuing people's desciptions of home with meaning they did not intend. perhaps i am hearing what i want to hear. perhaps i want this thing to exist in the lives of others which does not exist in mine. not in the way i have descibed here. my family history is a collection of abandonments, nullifications, abuses of bond, denial of responsibility, the shattering of love and trust. i know the thing by my experience of what it is not. i have attempted to make a fortress of myself in the absence of familial steadfastness. i have largely been successful.
perhaps this is why i love my husband's family so much. enormous in both number and laughter, they greet me with smiling eyes and kisses planted right on the lips.
kisses planted right on the lips are not something that occurs inside the boundary of my own blood family fence. real hugs do not occur either. we stand with inches of air between our chests and tap each others shoulders with our finger tips, a hummingbird flurry of filangies, and then part. a friend, noticing i hugged like this and wanting more, once implored to me: "Angela, just embrace me!"
i have a birthplace but i have no connection to it other than the fact that that just so happened to be where my life began. it could've just as well been anywhere else. my family (and therefore, i) did not reside in that locale long. i have no memory of it and, with the exception of unintentionally driving through Salinas on a single-lane highway once on a road trip, none if us have ever returned. i didn't even stop for gas.
i don't remember the first few places my family lived. of the places i can remember living, the total is 7. but that doesn't count the places my father lived, where he raised my brother apart from my sister and i; places i only visited, save for one tumultuous year in high school. tack on 5 more.
the point is that, now, in the absence of parents, i do not have a structure to return to. there is no family home. my childhood happened within the flux of apartment complexes; a place of nebulous, loose connection to others. someone always moving in, someone always moving out. likewise, there is no family grave site. i do not know if my mother's ashes were thrown into the woods or not. even if they had been, i would not have any other feeling about the place than the knowledge that she loved it there. there: a place i have only visited twice, one of which being the occasion of watching her die and attending her funeral, and since has been sold.
(work in progress)
(to be continued)
