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At Home With My Mom

Posted on by under Guest, Reclaiming Place

I spent a few days back home recently. At my mom’s house in a suburb outside of Houston. I’ve actually never lived there. Not in that house, not on that street or in that town.

DSCN6768.JPGI’ve never scaled those walls in the hallway. The back bedroom doesn’t have two different styles of wallpaper. The newer one from my high school years; a strip of the older wallpaper, from before the basement fire, in the closet still. The cement on the back porch doesn’t have my younger handprint engraved in it. The familiar items in the kitchen aren’t all in their right spot exactly. I mean, I can still find the sugar and flour in their Tupperware canisters to the right of the stove. The notebook, pens and scissors still have their exact spot so you can always find one when needed. But the cereal is now kept in the pantry closet, not in the cabinet above the dishwasher.

It’s a little unsettling seeing the stuff from my childhood in another setting.

Even though I’ve only frequented the suburbs of Houston in my adult years, I do have my list of favorite places to eat when I visit. Of course, it’s not the Hy-Vee grocery on the edge of my hometown where there’s a tenderloin sandwich special on Tuesdays. Or the Chinese buffet that makes the best American-style chicken strips because my friend’s dad, who owns the restaurant building, taught the owners how. Or the new donut shop that opened recently. I frequent all of these when we go back to spend time with extended family still there.

We have our list though. My favorites in her new town don’t hold the childhood memories that I have of that small town in rural Missouri. But they’re new memories I’m making with my mom.

We were sitting in her living room one afternoon and I mentioned how at home I felt in that moment. She reacted with great surprise. In a shaky voice, she said, “Really? Because it always makes me feel bad that we can’t meet up at the old home place. I never imagined leaving there.” My mom grew up in a town so small it didn’t even have one stoplight. She married young and knew no greater joy than being a wife and raising a family. In that one statement, she expressed her ongoing incredulity at where life had taken her.

When Dad died suddenly in 2006, everything changed. Actually, things had been changing years before that. Divorce always changes things. But when Dad passed away and we uncovered the debt he’d been incurring, it became clear pretty quickly that the family property outside of my hometown would need to be sold. Mom already lived in town by then but I think we’d all thought the property would ultimately be our gathering place. Even though my brother and I lived in other states. Even though my mom had left behind her lifelong dreams some time ago along with the house they had built together.

I think a part of her never forgave herself for walking away from it all. She really had no choice. We understood that. But the heart always wonders.

“Mom,” I said. “Since the divorce you’ve lived in a few different places. They’ve all felt like home to me because you’re there. When I visit, my heart knows I’m going to see my mom.”

There will always be a part of me that wishes my mom still lived in the little ranch house on Route 4. I’d enjoy watching my daughter set up a picnic under one of the trees in the front yard. We planted them in the 70‘ so they’re probably mature by now. It would give me endless pleasure to set out walking on the dirt road of my childhood, three generations across. We’d take a walk to the old Methodist church, although its doors are closed for good now. On the way back, maybe we’d swing by the cemetery and have a short visit with dad. But it wasn’t meant to be.

Life takes us so many places. I’ve learned this along the way. Wherever it takes mom, my heart will find a home there.

11923208_10206213051718939_6918748677159137139_n-3My name is Traci. I live in southwest Michigan, somewhere in a triangular section connecting Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids with all things Lake Michigan. My husband and I parent one daughter. We have dogs, cats, pigs and chickens. Their number is always changing, as farm animal counts tend to do. I enjoy watching sports, reading, cooking and all things Bible study. I am a writer.  When I first started blogging, I wondered about what unique voice I could bring. I’ve landed on this one line: A country girl goes to church.

Surprised by Fear

Posted on by under Guest, Mess & Place

I walked out into the alley behind our house to dump the trash into the dumpster, only to nearly miss stepping on a used condom. It, along with the torn Trojan man package, was directly in front of our back gate. My daughter, age three, was right behind me–in bare feet.

“Oh no, honey,” I said pushing her backward with my hand. “You stay inside the yard. You don’t have shoes on; there might be broken glass.”

I opened the dumpster and threw in the trash bag, sidestepping the condom and three white crumpled tissues. I eyed a purple needle. I turned around and walked back into the yard, my lips pursed. Something happened in the alley right outside my gate, some sexual act. Someone left this remnant here, a sign that it happened. So much goes on in this neighborhood, in this great big city, that I never even know about.

I wished that my husband was home. He was away for a week, and at night I worried about the door. Was it locked? Should I go check? What would I do if someone broke in? My cell phone was resting on the dresser; would I have time to reach it if someone came thumping up the stairs? I was nestled under the covers in-between my kids — a chubby-kneed baby and a long-limbed preschooler — and feeling the weight of protecting them.

I never thought I would be scared to live here. I spent a good deal of my early 20s in this inner-city neighborhood. It’s where my husband and I dated, got engaged, and rented our first apartment. It’s where we brought our daughter home from the hospital as a newborn. And it’s where we discovered a little Mennonite church a few blocks away where, for the past five years, I have spent most Sunday mornings singing songs about peacemaking.

8275524986_8bb66bd218_o (1)I felt naïve, not knowing what it would be like to steer my daughter around smashed beer bottles on our sidewalk, to tell her to keep her tricycle inside our gate, to avoid the playgrounds where young men are sitting on the swings, smoking. “But, why, mama?” she wonders, and I don’t know what to tell her. I want her to be confident, to free range all around her environment like those happy cage-free chickens, to not need my constant, watchful presence.

So why, why, do we live here? I tell myself we’re here because place matters. Where we live matters. What we see every day, the people we come in contact with, the reality of our communities — they matter. Our place, our community, shapes what is “normal.” For every smashed beer bottle, there are dozens of friendly “hellos” and shared toys over the fence with the Somali family next door. For every waft of second-hand smoke, there are kind strangers holding open the door for my double stroller at the Dollar Store.

And I want to go down kicking and screaming against the mantras of the American dream, that more stuff and homogenous living is better. I want to rail against the malaise of centering only on me and mine and my kind. I want my kids to know that their whiteness is just one color among many. Because I want to be where God is dwelling, and God is here, or so I’ve been told.

The day after I found the condom I opened the door to our backyard, a serene patch of green contained inside a privacy fence. As my daughter squeezed past me to go outside and play, I heard the voices – loud and strained and scary. Neighbors were fighting. No, they were screaming.

“Mom, mom,” my daughter said as she lingered on the back steps. “What’s that noise?”

“Inside,” I said, pulling her back into the house, closing the door firmly behind us. My daughter’s eyes were confused, searching mine. I brusquely pulled out the watercolor paints and paper to occupy her, my heart pounding all the while.

As I watched my daughter paint at the kitchen table, I thought about friends who have lived on our block for over 30 years. They raised two sons who thrived, sent them to public schools, and volunteered countless hours in the community. People always wondered, always asked them: How did you do it? How did your kids turn out so well? And they replied: You never need to warn your kids about abusing alcohol when they see drunks walking down the block every day.

My kids, like their kids, will be okay, right? God is here, I reminded myself, as I swallowed back my fear. God is redeeming it all. I looked back over at my daughter, hunched over her painting. I peered over her shoulder and admired her splotchy stick-figures, their colors black and brown and pink. “Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, turning her sunny face toward mine. “Yes,” I replied as I touched the wet construction paper. “Yes, it is.”

* * * * *

stinaStina Kielsmeier-Cook a writer and recovering idealist from the cold north where she raises kids, maxes out her library card, and is usually late for church. A former housing advocate for refugees, Stina loves to talk about social policy, parenting and her neighborhood in Minneapolis. She blogs at www.stinakc.com and can be found tweeting, badly, at @stina_kc.

 

Broken bottle photo by Lig Ynnek

An Unwanted Gift

Posted on by under Money & Place

I wasn’t supposed to be there.

We were in sunny, sweltering Palm Springs for a week of orientation. It was the end of July, and I had spent the previous six months intensely preparing to move overseas. I had made a commitment to teach English for two years  in a country where it was illegal to share the gospel.

All summer I had been busy buying a year’s worth of toiletries (half a suitcase), filling the rest of my bag with clothes and food that reminded me of home, and reading books that my mission agency had sent about the country I was headed to. As I packed, I wondered what it would be like to live overseas. I had never lived on my own before. Many people I met that summer were impressed by my new job. Even strangers exclaimed, “You’re teaching English overseas? That’s so cool!”

But I didn’t want to go.

I was afraid of moving so far away from home. I’d just graduated from college and was leaving most of my friends and all of my family behind. I had been living with my family that summer,  packing in my bedroom and dreading the next year.

And I was afraid that I wouldn’t be a good teacher. As an introvert, I preferred working in small groups or behind the scenes. I was nervous about standing up in front of a classroom with 300 students every week. I had already taught in that country for a month two years previously and I’d had a wonderful time, but I’d had only fifteen students. When I’d returned, I was so exhausted from 16-hour days with students and teachers that I barely got out of bed for two weeks.

But I applied and committed to going because God called me to go. Even when I was overseas before, I sensed I would be coming back. When I prayed about what to do after I graduated, God said, “Be a missionary.” When I searched online for other jobs, he patiently told me, “You’re wasting your time. I’ve shown you what to do.”

Then I realized there might be a way to stay home.

By then end of May, we each had to raise $5,000 in support to be eligible to buy our plane tickets. But on June 1st, I had only raised $1,000. I happily thought, Maybe they’ll let me stay.

But because of an accounting error, my ticket was purchased anyway. I couldn’t believe it when recruiter told me that I had replaced someone on a team who hadn’t raised the required $5,000 to buy her plane ticket. I wondered why I had been allowed to go.

When I finally said the last tearful goodbye to my parents and flew to Palm Springs, I felt like a fraud.  I don’t deserve to be here, I thought to myself. I don’t fit in, and I didn’t even raise enough money to go. As soon as the accountant finds out that I didn’t raise enough support, maybe I’ll be sent home. As I thought about how embarrassing that would be, I almost wanted to stay.

When I finally met with the accountant and explained that I hadn’t raised the required amount, he said, “Oh, that’s fine. Of course you’re going. More support will come in after you go overseas.”

He was right, darnit. Over the next year, support eventually came in. My teammate later told me that she’d had an uneasy feeling when she first heard about their team. “I looked at everyone’s picture, and it just didn’t seem right,” she said. “But when we finally received the email saying that you were on our team instead and we saw your picture, we just had a good feeling, like our team was finally complete.”

And it was a good team.

But it was a hard year. I grew depressed and bitter because things weren’t going the way I had envisioned. The first people we met said, “We’re so sorry you’re at that school,” meaning our school – the one I was committed to working and living at for the next two years.

Our first semester was a whirl of negative rumors and disagreements all covered in humidity and thick, dark pollution that filled our nostrils and covered our floors in black soot. I was told that people were spying on me and I started to believe them, staying inside away from the crowds.

I had many wonderful students, but others didn’t understand English at all and didn’t seem interested in learning. I hadn’t been trained to teach beginning students, but that didn’t stop my self-condemnation. Frustrated at my failure in the classroom and with my team, I started procrastinating to the point of barely getting up until it was time to go to class. Day after day I returned home and collapsed on the cold tile floor in tears, crying with loneliness, misunderstandings, and homesickness.

I blamed God for sending me to that place, but mostly I blamed myself for failing to live up to my high standards. I had unrealistic expectations of success, and I didn’t give myself or others grace when we failed.

Maybe sometimes grace is easier to see–and receive–in retrospect.MiahOrenPhotography-1 copy 5

Now, 10 years later, I think of how my life has changed because I was there. I think of all the wonderful students I met who took me out to dinner, introduced me to their families, and encouraged me when I was ready to give up. How perhaps my biggest success was that I stayed and didn’t quit.

If I met the girl I replaced now, I would sit down over coffee and tell her, You missed a crazy year. I’ve never cried so much. I’ve never been so alone. But I wouldn’t trade that year for anything because God works all things for good. Even when it’s hard. And even when we do our best to run the other way.

* * * * *

MiahOren portraitMiah is the author of The Reluctant Missionary, a memoir about her time overseas. She writes about learning to let go of perfectionism and embracing God’s plan for her life. She lives in Dallas where she dreams of someday having another cat. Connect with Miah online at www.miahoren.com.

Where Are You From?

Posted on by under Finding Place, Guest

“This is my sixth time at this conference. Why do I have the jitters?”

I fired a short, honest tweet into the digital atmosphere, took a deep breath, and stepped into the halls of a Disney World convention center I knew so well. I scanned the crowd, simultaneously hoping to spot a friendly face and remain invisible until I got my bearings. My name badge displays a new city, a new company, and, oddly, my old name: Jen Rose.

The last time I was here, I was telling my engagement story and showing off a ring to anyone who asked. Two years later, marriage has changed more than a few things, but my former last name remains. Now it’s a radio name, belonging to a character on this networking stage.

Once I settled into the energy of the conference, I felt more like my past self. I spent the weekend laughing at old jokes with friends I grew up with, meeting newcomers, and struggling to give a short answer to every stranger who asked, “So, where are you from?”

IMG_6982“Well, I’m from here, Orlando, originally. But now I live in Massachusetts.” And I wondered every single time if that’s the right answer, if there even is a right answer.

Where are you from? Is it really where you traveled from? Because I’m definitely not from New England. Or is it where you work and live now? Is it the airport I flew from, Providence, Rhode Island, another state entirely? Do I tell them where my employer is – a small and sort of new CHR station in Worcester – or that I work from my apartment in another city over an hour away? I used to tell people I was from Orlando, but I actually lived in a small town an hour away. So should I tell them I’m from Boston because it’s a major point of reference and the only city most people out of state know of? No, definitely not.

Having two homes is weird.

*  *  *  *  *

It’s been about a year and a half since I said “I do,” packed up whatever could fit in a suitcase or the trunk of my Honda Civic, and moved into a third floor apartment 1,200 miles away from everything I had known. And since the day I arrived I’ve been wrestling with ideas of home and finding my place. Friends and family ask if I’m feeling at home yet, and I say yes. It’s partially true. I can get around without a GPS most of the time, I have favorite coffee shops, and I can finally pronounce some complicated Massachusetts town names.

And yet, still the displacement. Still the realization that I can’t go back to the past. And sometimes, the nagging voice that says “You’re different. You’re not from here.”

In some ways, the voice is right. This will never quite be home. That isn’t resistance to change, or bitterness, or resignation. It’s truth. And it brings some comfort.

IMG_6905The biggest move of my husband’s life was from the house he grew up in to our current apartment, eight blocks down the road. He’s a New Englander through and through. The rhythm of the seasons, the cadence of the language, the pride in the land and its history are all a part of who he is, and loving him teaches me to love this place more. So in a way, with him, this is truly home.

As for me… well, I can’t turn back time and grow up here. I can’t transplant my family, can’t rewrite history so my New Englander grandfather never married an Alabama girl and worked out his days in the orange groves of Florida. I can’t, and I’d never want to. The rhythms, seasons, culture, and history of my homeland have shaped me into the person I am, and though I never fully appreciated it then, I do now, every time I catch a glimpse of palm trees outside an airplane window and relearn how to breathe the heavy tropical air.

And you know, that’s okay. Home can be in two places, even many places. Home is where we first spring from seeds, and it’s where we replant our roots. But we still reach for the sun, for something more, for the home still coming, someday.

*  *  *  *  *

 Jen Rose“Where Are You From?” was written by Jen Rose Yokel. Jen was born and raised in central Florida, but now lives in the strange land of southern New England. She’s a poet, a radio nerd, and a regular contributor to The Rabbit Room. When not writing, she enjoys frequenting coffee shops, hunting down used books and vinyl records, and exploring nature with her husband Chris. You can find her thoughts and poems at jenroseyokel.com and see pictures of mostly food and trees on her Instagram @jen_rose.

Where the Heart Was

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

Home is the grit and gray of streets and parking lots and the widest freeway in the world. It’s being glad for a commuter train, so you can read while you sit in traffic. It’s the surprise of one of the largest urban parks in the United States, offering green respite. It’s watching the trails in that park erode,  years of play degrading into memory.

In the fall, after 32-and-a-half years in my hometown, I left in a rented truck with husband, dogs, bicycles, and a few scraps more, for a 2500-mile move to the north.

Here in this place, everything is different. Things I thought I knew slipped away when I wasn’t looking.

This place is beautiful. I ride my bike from the house to views that evoke the word ‘pastoral’: cornfields and rolling green hills and a giant, weathered white barn etched against an enormous blue sky, wrinkled mountains lining the eastern horizon.

This place is about as diverse as vanilla ice cream, and as sticky-sweet. When I travel through a nearby metropolis, I get harassed the moment I step off the train: ah, the anonymity of the city. It’s not that I miss being cat-called. But in the way that a survivor of abuse places herself in abusive relationships, I suppose the familiar–even the unpleasant familiar–offers some brand of comfort. I didn’t know I missed the sound of sirens til I heard one and noticed how odd it sounded.

In the winter, 936774_10201102501273563_1510282701_nI traveled back south, to revisit places and people I know, love, and miss. Already home was a place I could not access, although I was comforted by a Southern drawl, a Cajun twang, an East Texas pacing of speech. The molasses air felt like a hug. I swallowed my pride, and told the loved ones I’d abandoned that I had not found eternal happiness in committing this crime against home.

Home is eating out: Mexican or Cajun or Greek or breakfast-all-day or Italian or Indian or Turkish or Vietnamese or sushi or Jamaican or burgers or dirt-cheap, clean, enormous oysters on the half-shell served with a smile and an ice-cold glass bottle of Tecate. Home is hearing many languages, and bilingual street signs, and the good and bad of smelling everybody else’s life and toil on mass transit. Home is people smiling on the sidewalks and saying “excuse me” when you step out of their way, or “thank you” if you hold the door. It’s being asked for change.

In the spring, I reversed direction, to husband and dogs in the north, entering again a vast, coldly beautiful loneliness. “What have I done?” I thought, as I climbed into our new bed in this place. “I’ve killed ‘home’ forever.”

Home is not pretty. It is somber: concrete and steel, cars and smog, flatness and pavement. It is where a friend used the line, “hotter than a fresh-fucked fox in a forest fire,” as we mountain biked in all seasons and the temperature hit three digits in the shade before humidity factored in. But858353_10200727243412351_1337074395_o there was what I called urban scenery: railroad trestles along a bayou with a junkyard in the midground, viewed from a grassy path. Definitely a different kind of picturesque, but a memorable picture nonetheless.

In the summer, I remembered home: thick, damp, oven-like air and open, friendly faces on the street, a cacophony of smells–tortillas cooking, Indian spices, garbage, diesel fuel, body odor, stale beer–and multitude of skin tones. Memories as terribly distant as they were deeply felt. I felt tattooed by Houston, as I have been tattooed in Houston, and am tattooed with Houston’s skyline and the shape of the state of Texas. I can’t reach home, even when I’ve had the outline of it permanently inserted under my skin.

Here, the house we inhabit is imperfect, as all houses are. I have been here long enough now to mostly know which light switch does what. Knowing how to make the light shine, for eating, reading, or just dressing myself, has got to be an important step on the journey toward making a home.

It is fall again.

DSC_2393

Julia is a book reviewer, librarian, beer drinker, dog lover, mountain biker and native Texan now residing in Bellingham, Washington. She thinks a lot about concepts of place and home. Her favorite color is green.

 

When Your Bedroom Disappears

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

Days before, I found the phone number by searching the address on the Internet. A young woman answered, listened, and graciously agreed to give us a tour of our childhood home.

When the day arrives, my older sister and I drive familiar roads in a rental car. We’ve traveled from opposite sides of the country to this point in Illinois; she from Massachusetts, me from Colorado. Park Ridge is one big suburban grid of long, mature tree-lined streets and sidewalks on the northwest edge of Chicago. I roll down the window and whiff the familiar aroma of fresh cut grass mixed with airplane exhaust from nearby O’Hare Airport. It is the smell of roots and flight.

The rental car engine goes quiet by the curb in front of the two story brick bungalow at 704 South Crescent Avenue. Our parents raised the four of us kids here; three sisters and a brother. This was the address on all official forms and most letters addressed to me from 1973 to 1989; from Gerald Ford to George H.W. Bush.

We ring the doorbell on schedule, and a young, upper-class mom answers the door, smiles, and invites us in. We politely walk through renovated rooms where I am tossed between a sense of happy familiarity and disorienting displacement.

We walk through room upon room of fresh paint and updated designs: The front entry minus the cuckoo clock, the living room minus the teal carpet and large flowery wallpaper, the front sitting room minus the TV and plaid couch, the upstairs plus air conditioning, the kitchen plus new appliances and a stunning renovation. We linger in the kitchen and I notice the one big minus. They knocked out this wall, she points and explains, we wanted to make the whole space bigger. That wall once divided the kitchen from my bedroom. Every morning I used to lay in my bed on the other side of that wall, listening to my mom’s early morning WMBI radio programs and dishwasher clatter.

music-box-ballerinaNow the wall has disappeared and my bedroom evaporated entirely, replaced by functional upgrades and a redesigned floor plan. I lost the container that had been crammed full of my girlish years,

the hanging macramé plant holders,

clouds of Love’s Baby Soft Jasmin’ perfume,

the sound of tiny nocturnal pet hamster feet running on a creaking wheel,

the wind-up jewelry box ballerina spinning in front of a tiny mirror,

the puffy pink gingham quilt my mom sewed,

and the way I always slept beneath it facing the door,

the muted bass of bands like Boston booming from my brother’s bedroom,

a closet full of off-limits clothes my little sister borrowed anyways,

that one spot on the floor by the cast iron radiator where I sobbed over boys that I loved,

a secret drawer full of seashells and saved letters,

midnight poetry taped to my window.

Gone. The inner sanctum of my childhood entirely dematerialized.

Why do I feel so sad? It’s just a room, I say to my sister as we drive away. She nods. Gets it. Siblings hold pieces of each other’s’ history.

We head out of town and curve through neighborhood streets, past the red and white marquis of the Pickwick Theater and the stadium lights at Maine South High School. By that park swing, I feel the sway and twirl of the six-year-old version of myself. In that parking lot by the high school band door, I feel the wild heartbeat rush of my first kiss; under that one elm tree, the between-two-worlds melancholy of twenty-something. And somewhere around the corner on my way back home, I find the room of my childhood again.

Rooms are the containers that hold the past, for good or ill. They are the spaces that store roots and fragments of who we were, the lives we have lived. Writer, author, Frederick Buechner describes it this way:

“But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.” *

Sometimes my little sister and I end our texts or emails with the first line from Harry Connick’s song, “Forever, for Now.” “Meet me on the corner of close and soon,” we write. Then, “oxox” we sign off. Over the years, we’ve come to shorthand it. “Meet me,” we say and understand in a way only siblings can.

Meet me.

Meet me in the place with no address.

Meet me where the remnants of a past still live in pieces and fragments unclaimed, shared by few, in a room no longer contained by walls.

The name of the room is Remember.

* Quoted: Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces (1992)

*   *   *   *   *

unnamed-2“When Your Bedroom Disappears” is by Kelley J. Leigh. Kelley is a mid-life writer and mom of four sons.  Kelley’s home base is a quirky little mountain town in Colorado where she writes openly about intimacy issues and recovery in marriage and faith. Find her over at www.kelleyjleigh.com and on Twitter: twitter.com/KelleyJLeigh

 

 

Ink, Blood, and Tears

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

I got off the bus at my new school and saw the parking lot filled with cars. This was nothing like my  former crowded, noisy, urban Philadelphia high school with the dark stairwells and constant police presence. I’d never seen so many Ford Tauruses in my life. Some even had monograms on the doors. I didn’t even have a bike. I had a skateboard. A skateboard. I couldn’t even do an ollie, but for me, my board was transportation. It had worked in the city.

Out in the suburbs, I’d tried to skate to the mall but only got about four blocks away when I encountered a county road. With a 55 mph speed limit. I tried for about 15 minutes before I gave up. This was a real-life game of Frogger I was not willing to play.

I was 17 and had lost too many places to count: foster homes, schools, churches, playgrounds. But this was the worst so far. I’d made this move alone. Three weeks before, I’d had a family, my own room, my chair at the dinner table, my hook on the coat rack. But when they discovered I was cutting, they sent me to the hospital. My foster family of 7 years felt they couldn’t handle me anymore, a social worker told me. I wasn’t going back. My parents couldn’t even tell me themselves. They’d gone on vacation.

I was too old to tammyperlheaderpicplace, and I was going to age out of the system soon, so I was assigned a bed in a Supervised Independent Living facility managed by the children’s home handling my case. It was in a suburb of Philadelphia, an apartment with a roommate and a Residential Adviser. I was supposed to be learning life skills like banking, shopping, getting a job, making a budget, cooking for myself, doing my own laundry. I wasn’t great at most of those.

You’d think I would’ve reveled in this staged independence, but I didn’t. This was just another address I wouldn’t even have for a full year, and it felt like a punishment after my psych stay. I was removed from the home I’d lived in for middle school and junior high and taken from the city I loved. I would spend my senior year of high school, and my last year as a child, with strangers.

One afternoon a week I took the R2 train into Philadelphia for my counseling appointment. I don’t remember the building or the therapist. What I do remember is wandering the streets of Old City after my appointment, getting a soft pretzel and Pennsylvania Dutch birch beer at Wawa and just walking.

I would head toward the Delaware River and pass through Christ Church Burial Ground at 5th and Arch, where Benjamin Franklin and four other signers of the Declaration of Independence were buried. It was usually deserted except for tourists throwing pennies on Franklin’s grave for good luck. The earliest legible marker is from 1723. It was the perfect place for a suicidal teenager to spend hours alone. My time there didn’t make me want to die, in fact, it had the opposite effect. I felt at home there, comforted by a sense of permanence and presence.

I didn’t have much in the way of family or stability or even a future, but I had cobblestone streets, colonial flags, comforting row homes, historic markers, marble stoops with ornate cast-iron boot scrapers and hitching posts. And it wasn’t just the beauty I saw that made it home, it was the ugliness too. The empty lots, abandoned houses, broken windows, Free Mumia graffiti, and the box cities under the highway were the landscape of my heart. The soundtrack that sung in my head was the rumbling, shrieking el trains and the sparking, clattering trolleys. I claimed it for myself and it was all mine. Even Ramona Africa and the houses firebombed by Mayor Goode during the MOVE tragedy, consuming almost 4 city blocks, killing 11 people, and leaving 240 people homeless. They became a part of me, seared into my brain by flaming buildings seen on a cast-off motel TV with a tuning knob.

What little estranged family I have left in Philadelphia decreases by the year, but it’s not the people that draw my thoughts and my heart there. It’s the land–baptized by Franklin’s printing ink, revolutionary blood, and my own tears.

And William Penn in the distance, watching over it all. He prayed for his city to be preserved from those who would “abuse and defile thee, that you mayest be kept from the evil that would overwhelm, that thy children may be blest of the Lord.“

Tammy Punnamed (1)erlmutter writes about unabridged life, fragmented faith, and investing in the mess at her blog Raggle-Taggle. She is the founder of The Mudroom, a collaborative blog making roo
m in the mess. Tammy writes flash memoir, personal essay, and poetry, leads writing groups, and preaches on occasion. She lives in Chicago with her husband, Mike, and daughter, Phoenix, who has been called “the most interesting girl in the world.” She is the force behind Tammy’s blog series: “Life Along the Spectrum: Weird and Wondrous Tales of Everyday Autism.”

 

Photo is by Michael Perlmutter.

Leaving Home {part one}

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

I remember the emptiness of the moving truck after I backed it up to our garage in northern Virginia. I parked that behemoth, the largest truck they had, and walked quietly around to the back. I lifted the gate and pulled out the ramp. My two oldest kids ran up and down the clanging metal, jumping around in the back and leaping from the wheel wells, shouting their names and marveling at the echo.

I remember that echo.

The  emptiness was everywhere. The trees were shedding their leaves. The immaculate houses looked down on us disapprovingly, like a row of unhappy teachers,, their shapes dim against the slate gray sky. I felt like those beautiful houses (or perhaps their occupants) held us in contempt – we had not been able to make it there. We were not good enough.

Inside the house, rooms were either empty or had stacks of boxes huddled in their centers. I walked through the rooms to make sure we hadn’t forgotten anything. There, the third-floor room we brought Sam home to after he was born with that perfect knot in his umbilical cord. There, the room I painted pink for the girls. There, the kitchen with its marble countertops, the countertops we had leaned against with friends on late summer nights, the countertops that held me up when I told Maile the business wouldn’t take us through the winter. We were drowning in debt.

We didn’t breathe so much as sigh. I felt like a failure, unable to make enough money to keep my family in the place that we loved. I felt lost and fragile, as if one more tiny bit of bad news would be enough to send me over the edge, into the emptiness of midair.

That emptiness was everywhere. Including inside me.

* * * * *

My wife later told me a story about those last days in Virginia. Last nights, actually. She woke up after midnight to the sound of nothing. Our children were all sleeping, the neighborhood outside was silent. There was a large window by the bed that looked out over our tiny back yard and into the tiny back yards of the houses behind ours. Street lights threw dim shadows on to the ceiling, drowned out the stars.

My wife woke to a ball of anxiety about what was happening, about our business going under and all the debt weighing us down, about us having to leave a place we loved and move our family of six into my parents’ basement 150 miles away. She slid out of bed, down onto the floor, and put her face in the plush carpet.

How can this be happening? God, how can you let this happen?

She heard the closest thing she’s ever heard to an audible voice from heaven, and it echoed in her mind, one phrase reverberating and growing.

This is a gift.

When the phrase faded off into the darkness, disappearing beneath the whirring of the ceiling fan, my wife shook her head.

Well, she muttered, it’s a pretty shitty gift.

She stood up off the floor, crawled back into bed, and went to sleep.

* * * * *

I can’t decide which is easier, packing up an entire house and moving truck on your own, or having your entire community come out and help you do it. The first is physically difficult, nearly impossible. The latter is emotionally difficult, nearly impossible.

We walked beside friends carrying our boxes, our furniture. We laughed and joked about how only the best of friends help you move because everyone hates losing friends and everyone hates moving. We let one of the guys take over the truck packing duties, and he wielded his engineering skills like a champion-Tetris player. The door to the behemoth barely shut, but everything was in. That slamming sound was it. The latch clicked. The lock connected. Our four years in Virginia were nothing more than a closed door.

We hugged them, perhaps the closest friends we had ever made, and we promised to stay in touch, though we knew it was unlikely. They walked off into the night, one family at a time, and we went back inside the empty shell.

I can’t remember if we spent that night in the house, slept on the floor, and left the following evening, or if we drove off after our friends left. It seems like something one should remember.

What I do remember is making the three hour drive to our new locale through the pouring rain. I led the way, alone in the truck, my wife and our four kids in the minivan behind me. I remember the way the headlights of oncoming cars streaked down the windshield.


That was one of those drives I’ll never forget, when my thoughts weren’t deep inside me, but out in the open, like residue on my skin. There was a tangible sense of loss, as though someone had died. One phrase kept circling back through my mind over and over again with the rhythm of the windshield wipers.rain


Now what?

Now what?

Now what?

I remember arriving at my parent’s house – it was quiet there. They were away. We left our stuff in the truck and carried the sleeping kids to their new beds in the basement. Our new home. Our new life.

Our “gift.”

***

Shawn Smucker (1)Shawn grew up in a ramshackle farmhouse with one of those enormous porches where he would sit and read far too much for a boy his age. Across the street was everything he could ever need to live an adventurous childhood: an empty church, a large cemetery, a winding creek. Every book he read during that time is set, in his mind, somewhere in that square mile.

The Grown Up

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

Two years ago, I entered adulthood. Not by virtue of turning eighteen; I’d already done that. I found myself at thirty-one, untethered. Until then, I’d led a life of quiet habit and order, hoping that eventually I’d be recognized as a great talent. But I tired of waiting and so I quit my normal routine, church, and several lifelong friends.

There were now gaps in my weekly habits. I went around industriously filling them up by hanging out with people I hoped would become my friends, getting involved in bad romances, and spending money I didn’t have. I tried to get several people to marry me. Along the way I learned that the last thing that will endear you to someone is to suggest marriage in the first three weeks of a relationship.

My problems were threefold: I was not married (and badly wanted to be), I was a writer who did not write, and I was not in the kind of job I dreamed, when I was in college, that I’d have at thirty-one. Instead, I worked in a sleepy realty office, reading ebooks all day long, and dreaming of being the next Barbara Pym.

I tried to solve these problems by switching to a new job in downtown Hartford that promised a more lively environment, and moving back to my parents’ house. I’d spent the previous five years with roommates who married and moved regularly, which meant I always had to find a new place to live. Living with my parents again—in the basement no less—felt like a big step backwards. I continued seeing one of the well-intentioned but frightened men I was trying to convince to marry me.

But what had happened? Why had my life curdled and become so wretched? Why was I walking around in a desolate daze of dreariness?

Most days at at my new job, in the well-appointed office on the eleventh floor of a posh skyscraper, I forced back tears while balancing spreadsheets. My job performance suffered, something that had never happened before. I grew despondent.

I could not sleep, partially due to perpetually analyzing my life with its dearth of accomplishments and partially because I spent most of my non-work hours with the boyfriend I was afraid to leave alone for fear he’d have time to assess me and conclude we’d be better off apart.

I wanted peace, but I was heading toward an internal crisis of massive proportions. It was like drowning but not wanting to call attention to the shameful fact that I couldn’t swim.

Finally, in a fit of desperation, I told the boyfriend that I needed to be alone for good. I told my bosses I would start work an hour later in the mornings and make up for it in the evenings—I decided that time to read and write in the mornings was essential for my recovery. I began reading Madeleine L’Engle’s book Two-Part Invention, a memoir of her early artistic development and later marriage to her husband, the actor Hugh Franklin. I began writing in earnest. I began to listen to the advice of my worried parents asking me to sleep and eat more and go to writers workshops.

photo-1428790067070-0ebf4418d9d8The nascent grown-up in me began to move, struggling for breath and life.

I had tried to extend my adolescence for years: the naive expectation of what I thought life should  be. I thought it’d be an easy, pain-free way toward accomplishment, like the stories of people getting discovered by a famous producer and becoming famous overnight.

I quietly put the adolescent away in a shopping bag I used to deliver used clothes to the thrift store. She would be happier companioning a younger person, anyway.  

My grown-up was far more peaceful than the adolescent had been. Yet real peace was elusive for me. I think it is stated best by Gerard Manley Hopkins who wrote: “O surely, reaving Peace, my Lord should leave in lieu/ Some good!/ And so he does leave Patience exquisite,/ That plumes to Peace thereafter”. I clung to patience as a new adult. Peace could come later after patience laid its groundwork. Patience helped me start writing a book. Patience sat with me when loneliness made its frequent visits.

My grown-up showed me how to sit, to work, to choose to be alone, to be silent sometimes, to avoid bad relationships, to say “no thank you”. She showed me how to accept sleep as a friend and not a thief of time. To not get tipsy every time there was wine present. She showed me the promise of good work that only my hands could do.

****

image1 (1)“The Grown-up” was written by Elena Shekleton. Elena lives in Denver with her husband, the artist Dan Sorensen. She is currently working on a novel and a book of fairy tale short stories. Elena loves hiking in the Rockies, and exploring the breweries and book shops in her city.  Her apartment is now free of roaches.  

Announcing New Writing Fellows!

Posted on by under Announcements

Our first year at You Are Here stories has been an adventure and a delight. From the very beginning, we loved the idea of inviting a range of people to share their experience around common themes, but until we dove in we had no idea how rich and rewarding the story-sharing experience would be.

As we began to dream together about year number two—how we might expand our perspectives, engage new voices, and invigorate our collective explorations of place—it seemed fitting that we would invite new Writing Fellows to join our core team.

Some of these faces will not be new to you. Most of our new Writing Fellows have guest posted here in the last year. They immediately got what we were up to and wanted to be a part of it. Others might be unfamiliar, but they each have somehow been a part of our broader storytelling community, and we have great admiration for their hearts, minds, and ways with words. Whether or not you know them already, we’re sure you’ll be drawn into their experiences and viewpoints as they share about their unique places in the world.

In November, you will see stories by some of these Writing Fellows about their experiences with “Losing Place.” Next month, all of these new team members,along with the You Are Here regulars you have come to know, will share stories under the theme “Finding Place.” We hope you’ll come back again and again.

We also want to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Sam Turner and Jonathan Bower, founding members of You Are Here, who are cycling off the core team.

With that, please help us welcome the 2015-16 You Are Here Writing Fellows!

Shawn Smucker (1)

Shawn Smucker
Shawn is an author, co-writer, and blogger, and he lives with his wife and their five children in the small city of Lancaster, PA. Having grown up in the country, he’s rather awestruck at how the city can provide such a powerful place for contemplation. On any warm day, should you be walking down James Street, take a peek at 41 West and you might see him writing away on the porch. If you’re not in the area, you can find him at shawnsmucker.com

red stripeJ. Nicole Morgan
Nicole lives near Atlanta, Georgia, surrounded by the trappings of suburbia and many, many oak trees. There’s a nature preserve across the street from a big box store, and the rippling creek and rocky path are a welcome place to retreat. Nicole works-from-home-or-coffee-shop as both a ministry assistant and as a freelance editor. Connect with Nicole on Twitter or at her blog.

IMG_8758 copyMeredith Bazzoli
Meredith has spent her whole life orbiting around Chicago and its suburbs. She currently resides just west of the city with her husband Drew, who grew up a Hoosier. She never thought she could marry one of those. Meredith calls herself a “recovering teacher” and has taken a break from inner city education to write, perform improv comedy, and tutor. Wherever she can, Meredith seeks to start conversations about the life we stuff under the bed and keep off our Instagram feeds. Join the conversation on her blog.

Ed Cyzewski Author Cafe (2)

Ed Cyzewski
A former New Englander now temporarily in Columbus Ohio, Ed is an author and freelance writer with an obsession for vegetable gardening and hockey. When he isn’t chasing after his two very busy young sons, Ed can be found writing from the same cafe six days a week with a mug of light roast coffee. He is the author of Coffeehouse Theology; Pray, Write Grow; and A Christian Survival Guide. You can find him online at www.edcyzewski.com or on Twitter.

Amy Maczuzak (1)Amy Maczuzak
Amy spent the first 18 years of her life craving a home base. Since graduating from high school, Amy has found home in the hills and valleys of western Pennsylvania, ultimately settling in Pittsburgh. She works in Pittsburgh’s East Liberty neighborhood, as a member of the marketing and communications team of the CCO, the campus ministry that changed her life during her college years. Amy loves reading, drinking good coffee, and spending time with friends, family members, and her cat, Charlotte Brontë.

Elena Contributor Pic (1)Elena Sorenson
Elena lives in Denver with her husband, the artist Dan Sorensen. She seems to always have a book and journal in hand, even at parties and the movies. In particular, she can’t get enough of Victorian novels and murder mysteries, and can often be found sitting on a camp chair on her apartment balcony, absorbed by treacherous outlaws or spirited wives and daughters. Elena is a freelance writer by day, and a fairy tale and fantasy writer by night and early morning. New to Colorado, she blogs about exploring life as a Connecticut Yankee in the wild West at actyankeegoeswest.wordpress.com