Home, Part 2

When we were kids, our grandma and grandpa had a television in every room (except the bathroom). They never moved from the side-by-side, shotgun duplex, the last of the properties of several they had owned and grandpa had tended over the years. The background squawk of the TVs was as constant as the simmering pots on the stove.
I don't know what grandma's favorite show was or even if she paid attention. White noise. Colorful noise, maybe blunted by the power and color of her personality. It mostly played in the kitchen, toward the back of the house, much of which had been built by grandpa. At one point in the house's history, the kitchen was the back of the house. Mom told tales of trips to the outhouse, even as inner City of New Orleans dwellers.

Whatever grandma's favorite show was, grandma knew that all of the people in them had indoor bathrooms, just like her, and likely had more than one color TV—maybe in every room, just like her. Toward the front of the house, the televisions rarely played. Instead, the sound of a bar across the street often filled the air. An ironic coexistence, given that grandpa was a Baptist preacher and did not set foot in the establishment. It was an ironic coexistence with his step son who lived in a tiny living space upstairs with its own entrance who regularly stepped into that establishment.

Ironic? Uneasy? Maybe neither. All these things belonged. Was it a sense of humor or a load of tolerance—or maybe an exercise of non-judgmental Christian love—a test of the church's Great Commission playing itself out, a world across the street that begged the preacher man to save then; and a man who was more willing to open that door than his wife was eager to accept.

Or a test provided by grandpa's eldest granddaughter who, on a Sunday morning, dressed finely for the good church people to see, one of four shiny, cared for grandchildren of whom he was much too proud, would peer into that magic TV box at American Bandstand, full of gyrating young people running afoul of the expectations of that sacred day and afoul of young Christian lady conduct in general.

But she loved to dance. She loved dance, a student of people moving to music, to the beat and of their hearts' desires, still too early in life to have an understanding of what all those desires were, but knowing of them—enough of them to watch, not getting to close and knowing that she could watch because she was her grandfather's granddaughter.

The TV would be turned off not from disapproval, even as my mother and I lived moments of uneasiness, appropriately worried about hurting grandpa's sensitivities, feelings or the equilibrium of moral order. The TV was turned off because it was time to go to a church service at which grandpa would preach, that would last hours and would be capped off with a score of fawning middle-aged women who had to meet grandma and grandpa's beautiful grandchildren.
Those three-week summer visits were punctuated on the front end by grandma's vigilant wait on the front stoop for a weary carload of Minnesota kids to show up at the house on Roman Street. We would arrive as new-again strangers who would ease into the growing familiarity that, at some point, devolved into mostly-hollow threats from grandma saying that if we did not behave, we'd get a whipping so bad we would not be able to sit down for a week.
 
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Next week, the final installment (I think) of “Home.” Be sure to check out the first installment at: http://theclarencewhiteblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/20/home-part-1/. In the mean time, tell the rest of us what home means to you.

Home, Part 1

This is the first installment of a three-part series.  It began as an assignment given to me and my colleagues as Givens Foundation Emerging Writer Fellows.  There are many facets to this theme, and I will get the chance to explore them with my fellow writers as we workshop each others’ works, but I hope that some of you will leave thoughts, now or at the end of the series. 
Thanks for reading and thanks for passing this on to friends.

Clarence

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John and I made our way up the walkway to Mary’s house. It was a sunny, spring afternoon. We had just come from our local political convention: 1994, a year in which we failed, again, to win the Governor’s election, a year in which I would be on one of many versions of the staff that could not get our guy into the mansion on Summit Avenue. That day, Mary had invited several people over. I don’t know who we endorsed that day, for what offices or what issues we decided. I’ve been to more than my share—and a good share of other people’s conventions—a constant blur and while I can remember the details in the moment—but don’t ask me today about any moment of years of beautiful spring days spent inside school auditoriums when more sane people would be outside playing in the newly arrived Minnesota warmth.

I don’t remember, either, what John and I spoke of on the car ride to Mary’s. I don’t remember who drove, although I think it was me. 

John was a not-yet-old but past grownup California blond who was way too serious to waste his toe-headed noggin on surfers’ waves. My much younger nappy head was willing to listen and the two of us spent the trek from convention to Mary’s in tandem—until we stepped onto Mary’s walkway. 

I walked a step ahead of John. We came to the front door and I reached up to open it and began walking in. John was a bit startled and shot me a what-the-hell-are-you-doing glare and said, “Do you live here?” 

I did not live there. Not really. But John did not know the substance of my over-familiarity. He did not know that over-familiarity was more than a function of how many times I had been there. He did not see the implied welcome invitation of the woman who rarely locked the door to her house. He mostly did not see my relationship with Mary, one that was more than familiar, but one that made it a place to lay my weary head as much as my dusty satchel. 

Months before, Mary’s dog Beau’s made his first visit to my house. We walked in the door and Beau shot in and made his way down the hallway. We did not notice at first, but a minute after we arrived our noses told us that he had left something in the hallway. 

We both laughed. “It means that he knows this is a place where I belong,” she said. He had done the same thing when he walked into her house for the first time. A pet-savvy friend told her that pets will do this: leave droppings in places that they know are the places of their people. I don’t know how Beau knew this. He saw no tooth brush in the bathroom. He saw no clothes in the closet or a favorite mug in the cupboards. Maybe there is a smell. Maybe it was the way that she walked to the door, a step ahead, that told him that this was a place she belonged. At that point, I was not sure if Beau belonged. We laughed some more. I let Mary, her body still heaving with laughter, pick up the mess while I opened a window. 

Dogs are like people. Or maybe people are like dogs. Or maybe this is just a false, crude and convenient anthropomorphism. There is something about the places where we will leave our mark and our precious possessions; drop our weapons, our hair and other things that we hold tightly inside when we are somewhere we belong or somewhere that is our own. There are places where, when we show up at the door, they have to let us in, places where we get to decide who comes in and places where we get to poop—just once—and the other creatures living there will still want us. 

These are places where we will tolerate our mess for a period of time and the messes of someone else for a much shorter period of time. They are places where, even in that mess, we are content to fall asleep in the middle of it, whether that mess is one of physical things from our closets, kitchens, toy bins for kids or toy bins for adults; or the emotional messes even if they stir our dreams and make sleep restless. 

And sometimes those messes are so bad, they can’t be ignored, even when the eyes in our head and the mind’s eye are closed and we try to settle a heart that won’t be quieted.

I listen to the dreams of friends and, just as often, the nightmares that have left them restless. I listen because the friends will tell me, want to tell me, seek out my ear. I listen because it is much easier than sitting on my own couch and having mine analyzed with a scrutiny that makes them hard to put to bed. And just as often as I hear the dreams that led my friends, way too young and anxious to fly out of their parents’ nests, I hear the nightmares that chase them away with a ferocity that makes me cover my ears, not wanting to believe that their child-selves had to sleepwalk through such caustic purgatories. 

A friend talks about the “distant murmur and hum of traffic” that perforated the darkness in which she slept as a child. First in a two-story blue house set on a busy, small town highway in southeastern Wisconsin. Later, after her parents split up, it was the front bedroom of her father’s place during the weekend visits. Today, she still needs the white-noise drone for slumber, a necessary accessory in that place where she lays her head. It is the lullaby that lets her body and psyche know she has arrived at the place she is supposed to be. 

Where we are supposed to be changes, nests change and so do the people who occupy them. But these are places with familiar sounds, familiar smells, familiar walls, familiar faces and familiar pillows. It is said that the smells are the most powerful, wresting memories from our subconscious. Still, I think the faces are most important—or more so what is behind those faces. 

My parents lived in the house, in which my siblings and I did most of our growing up, well into my 40s. They were there long enough for it to be grandma and grandpa’s place. Long enough to be the oldest people on the block. But it was always the place where I could lay my head, my satchel and almost every version of my stuff, my material possessions—even the messes that were created by my string-saver mentality. 

There are places where, when I show up, they have to let me in. There is a place where I can sit without worrying if it is my chair. I can go to the refrigerator and take what I want—or maybe ask, not if I can have what I want but, rather, if anyone else had plans for it already. Someone will either offer to do my laundry or ask if I can help with the laundry that is there. I will be fed or expect to feed someone including myself. All of this is a step of intimacy beyond that which makes us merely welcome.

Leaving Kevin

Ten minutes into sandbox play, I wanted to go home. I sat across from Keven Ward. Kevin was in 5th grade. I was in 6th. Kevin, a toe-headed, skinny lad, avidly plowed with his Tonka Toy bulldozer. I was less enthusiastic.

I felt odd, because for the previous ten years, just about everything I got my hands on became a car or truck--or bulldozer--or some vehicle I pretend to drive.

Suddenly, watching Kevin move sandy earth and listening to truck sounds coming from his mouth as we sat in front of the ranch office his parents owned, I was aware of how uninspired I was to do the same.

Instead of feeling the fun, I felt guilty. Guilty for leaving Kevin. I was still there in the sandbox, but emotionally, I had left the play space in which he was earnestly engaged.

Kevin was nice enough to invite me to play. He was cool enough--not that cool meant much to me at that point in my life. His family had a ranch. They had a college bookstore, both of which held enough adventure for two grade-school kids, and enough trouble to tactfully avoid. They had a camper, a Winnebago in which they took me on two camping trips. They were all nice to me. 

And maybe that is why that leaving felt like such a betrayal.

But I had already left that childhood space before I got there.  It was the first time I had any concept of my own personal maturation--real change that was, for some reason, more powerful than graduating to footless pajamas, being able to bike across town on my own, or even later, getting behind the wheel of the huge family station wagon.

I had an awareness that, at that moment, different from any other moment during the time I had known Kevin, I was older than him. Somehow, we had lost, without either of us noticing, a big chunk of peer space, the space where we could both be excited by toy cars and making truck noises and having that be enough to keep us entertained and connected with each other.

The next year, I would be in junior high and Kevin would still be at our grade school. I am not sure how many little boy things I had shed by the time I reached junior high, and how many I carried with me. A pile of toy cars that I left in the toy bins of our basement were not missed, but even today, the loss of a baseball glove is devastating. (I am still mourning the loss of a baseball glove I acquired in college.)

But losing friends from childhood is inevitable. The guilt of not knowing how to bring Kevin, occupied with the amusement of the toy bulldozer, into my emerging adolescence has belatedly transformed into a mild grief. Today, I am none-the-wiser, except to understand that I have grown out of friends and they have grown out of me, and it is a blameless loss. And it is a constant renewal with joy, pain and pangs of longing for past simplicities and futures not yet achieved.

I think of this today as I think of an old photograph of the old gang, Kevin included. We are posing with our baseball gloves on the vacant lot behind a house of another friend. We all seem happy with the sun beaming down on us, glad there are just enough to field a two teams for pick-up sand lot. I am wearing a glove that I still have today, one I pull out when an emergency game of catch breaks out and a kid needs a glove to participate.

I still have the memories of that lot, the place, the faces and the fun we had. A couple of these kids are still friends. But more is different than the same, as it should be.

And I look at my son and the relationships he has, how they have transformed and what it will mean in the future, what they have meant in the past, the joys, the heartaches and the wondering: what will happen in later days—or even with the passing of the next summer. I look at some of his friends and see Kevin in them—and sometimes in him. I see Kevin in myself.

In the mean time, it is a luxurious discovery to find that adult fun is really kid fun. It is a luxury because what I see as recreation is really the life work of the young while for us grown people, it is just play. It is adult because I am old enough to see that those things are so good for our mind and body. Our creative imaginations. An academic test of how we interact with others and care for their fun and well-being. Only games.

And most of the time, the grief that comes from winning or losing—either the game or the friend, is more a lesson than permanent injury, and we pick up with life and the kids who happen to be on hand for the next game, lesson and adventure.

And in the mean time, it is fun because it is fun. And now, more so than before, it is fun because I can see it in the faces and bodies of the children in addition to feeling it myself. And in the mean time, I can tell myself that I have at least grown a little.