Home

Jan. 2024

My Grandpa loved to garden, and when I was a kid, we shared many peaceful hours wandering his rose garden together. Because he was gruff and quiet, I called him “Grump,” which he seemed amused by. When he grew very old, and ill, I lived halfway across the state, and wrote him a letter. I said I was coming home to see him, but added, “If you get to Heaven before I do, plant me a rose.”

Grump passed away before I made it home. As I unpacked my three little kids, in the dark, in the rain, after driving across half the state to see him, I was met with an astonishing sight: there, in the middle of winter, in the middle of his paved driveway, stood a miniature rose bush, with half a dozen little red blooms. How did it grow out of pavement? How could it bloom in winter? The tears I’d blocked all day finally came. I couldn’t stop talking about the miracle rose bush to anyone who would listen.

Much later I recalled a stump Grump had once placed in the center of his driveway, as a place to display some of his potted roses. One of those rose roots must have traveled through the hole in its pot, drilled through the rotting stump and finally, burrowed through a crack in the driveway, into the soil below.

Years after the roses and stump were removed, the roots remained, waiting for the right conditions. Or, for a little help from a master gardener. So, the mystery of how a rose got there was solved. The mystery of it blooming in late winter – that I accept as a love note from my Grump. All this to say – roses and humans have something in common.

All the years I lived away, I longed to go home, but my husband’s job, and life, kept us away. Every fork in the road led to someone else’s hometown. Still, each new town held people and places I grew to love. Although my heart yearned homeward, it still behaved much like a potted rose, given ten minutes and a few drops of rain, it sunk roots through the pot, found a crack in the earth, and tried to make itself at home.

It’s the nature of roses and hearts to throw down roots and attach. Invariably, when it’s time to move on, some pieces of root and heart get left behind. The part that’s moved ahead eventually starts looking backwards, longing for the pieces it left behind.

There’s a famous novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe, which I never read, because the title made me sad. Who says you can’t go home again? And why not? Forty-five years after I left my hometown, the road finally circled back to where my husband and I began. Downsizing and moving to our old hometown made perfect sense, and while it was what I’d longed for, for seemingly-forever, we’d been in our new-hometown for nearly 30 years. It felt like ripping my heart out all over, one root at a time.

The physical labor of packing up our family home was nothing compared to the emotional wrench of saying goodbye to the house, land and people that had nurtured my family for three decades. I leaked so many tears, I stopped even noticing them.

I walked through each newly emptied room, saying goodbye, saying “thank you.” I said prayers for the new occupants. I touched each shrub and tree I’d planted, urging them to grow, to be happy. Then I loaded up the old dog, two yowling cats, and followed my husband in the U-Haul across the state to our new, old home.

A few seasons have passed, and we’re mostly settled. The dog has a new favorite tree to lie under. The cats laze all day on the new porch. Family and old friends welcomed us back. Two of our adult kids ironically moved to our new/old hometown before we did, so we see them regularly, and our third is not far away.

There are days I feel like Rumpelstiltskin, waking up and looking around in astonishment. Classmates have retired from careers I completely missed, raised children I never met, become grandparents, all while I was away. Some have passed on. I see ghosts everywhere, in this familiar, unfamiliar, hometown.

I finally read “You Can’t Go Home Again.” Unless you like long, melancholy novels, I don’t really recommend it, but the gist of it is, you can’t go home again-- because whatever the home of your memory is doesn’t exist anymore. Except in your head. Even if you never moved, home doesn’t stay the same, and neither do we.

But here’s what I think: home isn’t so much a place, as a bunch of memories of things we’ve loved, like shifting pieces of colored glass in a kaleidoscope. The voices of family and old friends, the song of blackbirds, the scent of apple blossoms and blackberries, diving into the river on a sweltering afternoon - are all pieces of my first home. The smell of sage, the taste of fresh walnuts, the brilliant flash of a bluebird, the voice of a friend on the phone- these make me ache for my old home.

My eldest son has just married a lovely woman from Ukraine. This new daughter of mine is doing an amazing job of blooming where she’s planted. Still, her own family couldn’t leave Ukraine to attend her wedding, nor can she go “home,” to visit, at least for now. All I know to do for her is to try to make this home feel more welcoming.

For some of us, home is one specific place, but I’m evidence that, with a little time, and enough love, home is anywhere we sink down roots and let ourselves love. I pray for my new Ukrainian child that this will eventually become at least one of her true homes. One day I hope to visit her family in a peaceful and free Ukraine, and to welcome them to our home as well.

Like my grandpa’s rose, when we find the courage to bloom, we make magic. We make this lonely planet into a home. Roses and love ramble all over, ignoring logic and boundaries, even, apparently, unconcerned by the borders between this world and the next. We should do the same.

All we need is a crack in the pavement, and a little time. Whatever Gardener sent us here seems intent on us blooming, even when we think we’re too old, too tired, or the season is too dark. Maybe we can’t go home again, but we can make a home, for ourselves and for others. We weave it together with roots and with love, like a living hedge that circles and shelters us all, blooming over, and over again.