when this is making a home

I was fourteen. The age where all your limbs are back to their newborn feeling, you've changed jeans sizes twice or three times, up and down as your body asserts sheer aliveness. I tripped over things all the time, and more than one well-placed odd brick in the familiar sidewalks in Newburyport were my undoing all summer.Dread finds you like a slow drop of water dragging its way down your back. It slides over you, leaves a sticky trail behind in its wake. The international terminal at Logan airport, November, my newly teal and purple colored braces, an endless drip of details. My dad's suitcase, borrowed for the occasion, in the back, and my backpack, forcibly begged a few nights before - white and blue, Jansport like the other girls, but mine was too new, too shiny. It didn't look like I skied across open fields on the weekends with it. I tried to scuff it with my hands as I sat in the front seat, my mother chatting in the back of the van, my dad's eyes keen on the road ahead of us."You're going to have so much fun," my mother told me, her voice almost singing. I nodded dumbly. "It's not every day you get to go to France for a whole month!" I only half-hearted smiled, whispered, "Mais, oui," before I stopped, almost in tears.Departure is like dread. The airport was immediately close but traffic kept it ever-approaching, past the dog racing track exit and the two dangerous rotaries and the sixteen Dunkin' Donuts, on both sides of the highway. We parked, we made our way to AirFrance check in. We saw my classmates. My mother, who is relentlessly kind and friendly, chatted with the teachers. My dad drank a small coffee quietly, patted me on the shoulder, smiled.It was the first time I'd left home.--I used to think being a homebody means being someone afraid of change, someone who doesn't adventure, the lack of curiosity. I am both, but they don't mean each other. A homebody, I have learned, is more often the person who burrows deep into places, who scatters pieces of himself into the walls and floors and doorways and sidewalks, builds belonging with place. They're the people who trace the same path on their morning run, not only out of habit, but out of love. They love home, but home is also the thing they know best how to make, everywhere.--I was a new twenty, in the city almost two months when my father came to visit. I met him at the Newseum cafeteria, coming all the way over from my internship site on the Metro, moving with the sure footing of my SmarTrip card and my work wardrobe. I took him to dinner at my favorite restaurant, loud as it was with the happy hour crowds drinking blueberry martinis while we had water and burgers and fries, and I told him the stories: Eastern Market, walking to the Metro, learning to cook a little on my own, the way that I never thought I would, the Baptist church I went to, the almost-tattoo in Adams Morgan."You've made a home here, Hil," my father told me as we walked back towards Union Station under a still-warm sky, "It's so good to see."--Home is not about travel or return. Home is about widening spaces in the heart.No one famous said that, I don't think, but it sounded wise.--The day of my wedding, I saw my dad first when I was trying to move a box of bouquets into the room where I was getting ready with my bridesmaids. I saw my mom a little later, when I was trying to give my car keys to someone. She was wearing one of my favorite dresses she owns, a cornflower blue, and I remember she laughed. There was a remarkable kind of laughter that day, rich, full, the kind that bubbles over and makes you think you must gather it, the woman at the well first hearing of living water.The kind of laughter you grow accustomed to over the years, the kind that fills you and fills you and gifts you the grace and courage to leave, to begin.And this is how I have learned to begin to make a home, ten years after that first departure:to fill the rooms with laughter.Love,hilary

you are home to me

The house was always cold. British stone is like that - giving its heat and light back out to the wet lawns and sheep fields, welcoming the damp in return. When we woke up that morning, I felt the end of the heated blanket with my wriggling toes, daring to put my feet against the frozen edges of the sheet beyond. It was hard to believe that I was there - I always felt that in this house - and I hated mornings because they promised another day closer to leaving again. I squeezed my eyes shut against the patch of sunlight.The kettle sounded below, and I heard water running from the rickety tap in the bathroom. The bathroom was even colder than my bedroom at the end of the hall, and I knew my mom was chattering her teeth against her toothbrush as she sighed into the smudged mirror. I should join her, begin the day. But I didn't want to wake up from my dream, from being for a brief glorious moment a nine year old in England with carrot-colored hair and freckles, beautiful in her moongazing, climbing ladders and being kindred spirits.Mom poked her head around the heavy white door, the one with the handle lower than my hip. "It's time to get up - breakfast is almost ready. They're waiting for us." I sat up, the warmth from my back against the blankets immediately evaporating. I dressed in a purple sweater and jeans, pulled on socks and shoes. I was too young to brush my hair, so it hung in curtains on either side of my round cheeks.The stairs were my favorite part of the house. They were narrow and deep, covered in thick and dusty red carpet. The smell going up those stairs promised me every morning that it was real, that this was my grandparents' house in England. The smell - a combination of my grandmother's rose water, the dust and smoke from the downstairs fire, something like spring... I closed my eyes every morning, breathing it in, promising myself, someday.We ate eggs with their yolks running across the white china. We ate toast printed with small squares from the Aga griller. We ate orange marmalade, dripping off the crusts of our bread. I drank tea out of the fine china, holding the cup with both hands. It was silent, and I watched my grandmother bend low over the stove, her hands shaking as she lifted heaving pots of potatoes and carrots, making room for a turkey. I saw the carefully peeled apples in the sink. Granny never made apple pie, but it was Thanksgiving, and Mom and I were Americans, and she wanted to offer it to us. She wanted to bring home to us.I wanted to tell her she didn't need to bake an apple pie. Home was the smell of her staircase, the cold stones, the not-yet-blooming garden. Home was the hedges along the road. Home was the big tree in the front where I named snails, kneeling on the wet ground with my too-big black wellies stuck out behind me, my voice a high-pitched gleeful squeak. Home was the stamp collection we played with, Mom and I, at the table in the corner of the room, beneath the picture of Dad meeting President Clinton.I wanted to tell her, you are home. This house, tall Granddad and his pipe, his wink and the book he always bought me in the Castle Cary bookshop, no matter how old I was, all the Roald Dahl and their bright soft covers, the special illustrations by Quentin Blake. You are home, the pictures I sneak glimpses of in the parlor with the piano, the pictures of you with horses and with Granddad young and in love. You are home. You are home.I wanted to tell her those things, my heart bursting with them, but I ate the crusts of my toast instead. I drank two cups of tea in the kitchen while she baked the pie. At dinner that night, gathered around, I ate the first piece - let it slip down my throat and settle in my stomach. I drank more tea than Mom liked me to. I smiled, and smiled, and told her in the American accent that it was a wonderful Thanksgiving.That night, lying in my cold white sheets, waiting for the electric blanket heat, I closed my eyes and wished. But I didn't wish for Anne, for the heroes of my lopsided book pile. I didn't wish to be big like Abby. I didn't wish for more books at Christmas. I wish I could stay here forever. But wishes are thanksgivings, our hearts cut open by longing and love. I was nine years old, wishing for England, eating an apple pie and naming snails, my hair hanging like curtains around my face. All I wanted was to stay forever.And now, thirteen years later, that wish softened and bent with time, I close my eyes against the New England sun, and whisper, thank you. You are still home to me.

dear hilary: homeward bound

Dear Hilary,I was listening to a Sarah McLachlan song the other day - "World on Fire." Do you know it? Do you know that line, "Hearts break, hearts bend, love still hurts"? I'm wondering about this as it applies to my decision to stay home after graduation. I moved back, back to familiar people and places, back to what feels like an older self. I feel out of place, bent out of shape. And I look at the people who traveled, who journeyed across oceans or continents, who sit in university classes and write theses, who work in labs or in non-profits on K St or who teach for America... and I stayed here. Why does it hurt?Love,Homeward BoundDear Homeward Bound,Isn't it funny how easily envious we are? If we are dating, we are jealous for unattached freedom. If we are single, we pine over red wine for a relationship. When we are in school all we think is, "get me OUT" and when we are at work all we think is, "Remember that awesome paper I got to write about hermeneutics?" (Okay, not everyone says that).And when we return home, to our old rooms, our rickety bookcases, our messy kitchens, all the things we already know, we can think of nothing else but moving away. We plan elaborate apartments furnished by Anthropologie. We imagine long walks through Lincoln Park, along the Seine with fresh bread, in London, in Portugal. We tell ourselves there we'd find the self we're longing to be: fun and outgoing, breezy and yet thoughtful, maybe with a cool but understated piercing to differentiate the new season of our life and almost certainly with a whole new outlook on life.Ironic, love, isn't it, that the people who moved far away feel almost the same way. We imagine getting a Starbucks in the neighborhood we know, high-fiving the barista. We imagine using our native currency/language/music tastes. We imagine walking through the city knowing exactly where the used poetry bookshop is. We imagine ourselves, confident in the familiarity of things, on a long run around the pond that looks impossibly effortless. We're probably wearing the cutest possible running outfit in said effortless run.We are easily jealous of the lives and gifts we don't have. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: these things can always be your becoming. It matters tremendously that you are, as you say, "homeward bound" - part of your becoming gets to be grappling with the older self, the one you think you've left behind. Your becoming doesn't involve a new presentation or a new start in a strange place. Your becoming involves a mud pit wrestling match with the expectations of who you are and what you do. Most of these are your expectations, sweet heart - and it'll be a tough fight. But your becoming involves this tough fight.You've got a lovely, pining letter here. Hearts do break and bend, love does hurt. It will do that next door to you and 10,000 miles away and inside you. You know what that song is really about, though, right?World's on fire, it's more than I can handle, tap into the water, try to bring my share. I try to bring more, more than I can handle, bring it to the table, bring what I am able... Bring more than you can handle. Bring your share. Bring what you are able. The point of singing this isn't to throw a pity party that you're back in your old neighborhood and others are somewhere else. The point of singing this isn't to collapse because sometimes we suck and are beautiful and stupid and other people are so very mysterious and we want things we can't have and we're restless and... and... and...Give to the table in front of you more than you are able. This is nothing less than your great task. You are homeward bound. Bound there, giving your whole heart, I think, you will be amazed at what you become.Love,Hilary

on car rides and kate rusby (a letter to preston)

Some of you know that last year, my friend Preston and I started pondering theology out loud in letters. He writes on Tuesdays, I write on Thursdays, and we wander through Gossip Girl and workloads and grace and mystery and espresso. Won't you join us? You can read his last letter to me here.Dear Preston,Thank you for your letter this week. I'm glad for the PhD, the active cooking life, the moments where you pause and realize you are in graduate school in theology, doing many of the things you once claimed on your front porch you believed you would do. I'm glad, too, that you are keeping the doors open and allowing the Holy Spirit to move freely.   You write about writing in a way that reminds me of Rilke, and all the many voices that I imagine whispering that if you see beauty, you must share it somehow. Perhaps it's through writing or a good martini. Perhaps it's through volunteer hours in the nursery, or long walks with friends. But we are called to share what we have been given. And I'm glad you share so generously with us.I have been sick this week, a cold rambling through, and today I slept and listened to Kate Rusby and watched Gossip Girl (I cannot make up my mind about Blair and Chuck and Blair and Dan). And as I was listening to Kate, it rained outside, and I drank tea and remembered.I remembered how my dad and I used to listen to her. My high school was half an hour away, near to where he worked, and so in the mornings through the year we left the house at 7:01 am. I'm a horrible morning person, silent and wrathful at being dragged out of bed, and at first we drove in with NPR Morning Edition. When Dad's friend introduced him to Kate and her beautiful, haunting voice in form of the CD Ten (a compilation of her most popular songs), we abandoned the news to travel to England. We learned the words, and learned the space. We bought her other CDs, had specific songs that we skipped and others that got a second play.We stopped at the same Dunkin' Donuts every day for coffee and two doughnuts, one for him, one for me. We would sit with the car on in the parking lot, and the whole first year of middle school I would make him wait until 7:35 to pull away for the last ten minutes of the car ride. I was scared. I loved it, breathed it, believed in it, but I was also scared of it. School wasn't home. I didn't know how to be me. I didn't know how to trust others or myself.I wanted to stay close to my dad, in that silence, the car and Kate Rusby. That space helped me carry home with me when I slammed the car door and walked into math class. Her singing, and his quick hug each morning are among the greatest treasures of all those years at my beloved school.I think this makes me a homebody. I want to steady the world, for myself and for others. I want the sweetness of routines. I want Kate Rusby in the car every morning driving to school, skipping track 11 as we round the last 3 minutes and trying to time it exactly. I want the space Dad and I made for each other with her singing and our coffee and doughnuts. I want to carry that kind of space with me, offer quick hugs and regular coffee and familiar music, my hands held out to steady others.I think that might also be why I haven't written about the edgier things on this blog. Part of me really wants to, wants to write about women and work, write about politics or controversial theological problems, and I find myself writing about the steadier things. The things of home, of steady hands. I remember when Anne of Green Gables is talking to Gilbert, and she says, "But I went looking for my ideals outside of myself, I discovered it's not what the world holds for you, it's what you bring to it." I think I often do this - go looking for ideals outside of myself. But my ideals are the things of home, of car rides and Kate Rusby, of stillness and steadiness. And I think, for the first time, I'm beginning to love that.Love,hilary