How does anyone ever leave a home? It means so much. At least as much as the petal once it falls fragrantly from the rose to settle in the grass (It was meant to be there.) and it is at least as fragile.
I looked at the home in the photo. “Managed by Blue Summit Realty” it said. The watermark was splashed across the photograph so that no one could assume they could own it. I did, though. I had owned it. And I had birthed my baby son in that same big white bathtub the sign was crowning in the photograph. I owned it, I built it, I labored in it, I gave it life, I sorrowed, I bled, I laughed in the home. It had been mine. But how fragile! How much meaning was wrapped up in the timbers and frames and plywood and drywall. How little I knew. How much could timber and drywall mean? As much as the petal, touching the grass, finding it new, finding it home, losing itself a little, folding, laying its color aside, becoming smaller, shrinking, and finally dying. As much and as little. How we live and die in our fragile little homes, wherever we fall into them! They mean as much as the grass under our feet. As it touches us, we are changed. We cannot move from our homes, not really. There is no moving. There is only losing bits of ourselves as we go, losing the color, the feel, the sound, the memory of ourselves as we fade into the grass.
”Carpe Brewski.” I could still read the words carven onto the top of the steel bottle opener, still visible in the picture under the bold possessive watermark, still screwed into the side of the countertop. We sprung for that on a whim on our way out of the hardware store. We’ll enjoy seeing friends use that over the years, we chuckled, imagining a kitchen filled with the friends we would make and keep in the house. We would look at each other, husband and me, eyes meeting over a crowd of friends in that bright kitchen, surrounded by our work—paint we painted, wood we sanded, walls we cleaned and primed, decor we fought over and selected, compromising again and again for the sake of Home. I don’t know why they left it there, it made a good joke, I guess. A selling point, maybe. That hurt to think of. It felt like an offense. Like someone looking at my body, seeing my scar, my blemish, my moles, and saying, “We’ll leave it. It will make a good selling point.” Homes don’t want selling. They want loving. Like bodies, they don’t want to be marketed. They want to be seen and loved. I loved the home, I thought…I thought I even knew it then. But I didn’t. And I didn’t know I didn’t know. The excitement of the “big move” and the “big price tag” were luring me to think that they could replace what I was losing…and I did not know I was losing myself. I did not realize it was Me that was for sale. Too much of me had soaked into that house for it not to matter. The babies, oh, the babies! The little pudgy steps all over the floors. The burping into the carpet, the endless wiping of the floor, loving, loving the floor. All my love went into the floor. The aching arms cleaning, polishing the glass doors, the endless polishing of the glass. All my love went into the glass. The touching up of the paint from little fingernails, little heads bumped, little feet kicked, oh, the endless touching up of paint. All my love, all of it… went into touching, touching the paint. The walls and the floors received the tiny feet, and received my cleansing efforts, shone, smiled, and kept us all warm. Carpets kept our feet dry, the cupboards held our dishes and towels, guarding them quietly until we reached for them, almost breathing to us, “I have held them ready for you all these days”.
No part of that home was untouched by me. I left myself all over it. My children, their bodies, my arms, so strong now for the cleaning; my tears, shed mostly at night, missing other parts of me I did not know yet, and sometimes my husband who was gone so often. I left little ideas, plans, hopes, and heartbreaks in every room. Some half-borne, some miscarried. Barely grieved. And the house received them all.
I must look around this home, now, and see what I have eyes for, since I am older and wiser. Do I see how this house has held me? Can I see the grass into which I have fallen, how it is my home? Although the wind may blow me away at any time, notice how I have fallen just so, right here, into this particular place. Look into the kitchen, on my right. There is a herringbone-tiled wall, white and dependable, reaching up towards two little floating shelves, strongly supported by a carpenter’s brackets wisely hidden in a stud. My fingers formed little squares of drywall to hide the slits, pushing mud through every little crack around it, slowly, slowly disappearing each piece of evidence. Sand and scrape, sand and scrape, sand and scrape. All my love has gone into the walls. Beautiful wood shelf, strong, strong bracket, wise carpenter, faithful hands, all existing just to float over the white glossy tiles, supporting many, many plates for serving tasty food to many, many mouths; happy, friendly mouths. All my love.
No part of this home is untouched by me. The herringbone tile will tell you so. The green wall under the wooden bar in my kitchen will tell you so. It meets the white quartz slab of countertop humbly, at the same level, welcoming children and friends to sit, faces on palms, watching me wash all the white dishes in the deep, square-bottomed sink. Thump, thump, go the sock feet against the green wall. I have touched up and touched up and touched up that paint. There is sock feet and paint and love all mixed up on that wall. And I see it and it fills my eyes whenever I look just over to my right. And it sits right below the dependable white herringbone wall over which the shelves float. All my love.
The birds are talking outside my window. I have come to know them all. They live here, and were here before I was, before I and husband and children came to this musty brick home and scraped the green carpet off the porch. They watched us come and go, bringing dirt from here to take it there, making new things and removing old. We feed them often, and they thank us with their morning songs and their evening songs. Our pilleated woodpecker fancies himself a menace and attacks his reflection dutifully in our van mirrors. We know he was there when the mirrors are all askew the next morning. Faithful woodpecker! Faithful home.
The fig tree before me hovers away from the pair of blue armchairs towards the bright window. It leans eagerly into the sunshine, leaving half itself facing the room, apologetic to be leaving the beauty of my living room. Beautiful, it is. There is a blue-chipped buffet that tucks up underneath the half-wall before the stairs in this split-level living room. The half-wall, now stripped of its bangle of glossy blue spindles which welcomed us back into the 1970’s, floats at the top of the stairs, reaching its arm out towards the living room. Behind it is the hallway…grey walls softly edging grey walls like a geometrical love letter of angles and corners, trimmed with fresh white paint and a glass pendant light dangling like an earring over the graceful angles and edges. Its downward light meets the upward light of a chunky brown 1970’s attic-found lamp, topped with a new linen shade. Books welcome your curiosity in snug corners, tucked into baskets, square and round, and lined up like scholars atop the blue buffet. Plants, oh sing the plants! Plants drift over the room, green and glistening, soft and foamy, curling, promising, pleading, bristling, defying, and seeking and reflecting the light from every corner. One here, drifting down a stack of Jane Austen books, one there on the floor, standing resolute and ancient, with prehistoric spikes stuck like sliced watermelon rinds curling towards the ceiling. Plants actually grow in my home, showing the growth of my heart into this space. As they grow, so I have grown. As their beings breathe and exhale the life of this home, so does my Self breathe and exhale the life of this home. I see it. I see and I know the fragility and the meaning.
How quickly a change could blow across all of this! A quick decision could bring us to pack up the life and things into boxes, to truck our bodies across miles into a new place, to market the brick 1970’s building, now rid of its stinking blue carpet and softly clothed in greys and a new kitchen. “Let’s leave the bar stools, they look good with the green wall in the kitchen. It’ll help it sell.” We might say. But the green walls will remember more than they say. They will remember the sock feet and my hands cleaning, touching, painting, loving. Nothing can truly move us away all together. We are left here, though our bodies are in some new place. We have melted into the home with the herringbone tile. The fingerprints will always be in the mud behind the brackets. All my love.