home

when i was a kid we used to drive 8 hours north to visit my mom's family, every other christmas, and sometimes in between. my grandma's house was small--i say my grandma's house because despite the fact that my grandpa was always there, his home was in his boat, which had a more lived in look than anything else that had his name attached. my grandma's house was exactly that: hers. and we didn't spend more time anywhere than in her kitchen.

the kitchen was, and still is, tiny. i can't imagine how she raised a family of 7 in there, baking bread by hand and creating food. my grandma is a strong woman; i have no doubts about that. there's this family story about when her and my grandpa were going to remodel the house so as to add a bit more room for all the kids. grandpa was dragging his feet, so my grandma took a sledgehammer to the wall herself and said, well, there's a hole in the wall, you better fix it.

she's one of those people about whom legends begin.

morgan lwellyn wrote a book that i love, called finn mac cool. in the book she delves into the humanity behind the irish legend of finn, basing the great feats that made him notorious in reality. the legend happens later, when the tales are told around fires and roasted turkey legs.

i can see how legends are born; i am proud to say that i am born of legends. my family is a bunch of tale-tellers--tales of our family, what happened yesterday while we were shopping, the what-if of science fiction. we tell tales because it's written in our genetic code to do so.

but i think it's written in everyone's code, to share experiences with someone else's ear. the telling is as important as the listening, the absorbing, because at some point you will have to re-tell that self-same tale.

i've told more stories about my family than i can count. there's too many of them, i often think, to write down, so many that they'd fill a book. why do i keep them around, these stories?

because they remind me of home. they remind me of that feeling i had when i was a kid, that if i got a hug from my mother, the world would be put at rights. that when i sat in my grandma's kitchen, i was safe.

grandma doesn't live in this house anymore. i won't ever hear her bedroom door, which was just off the kitchen, open up with that little creak. i won't hear her slippers slapping across old yellowed linoleum, or the swish of her aqua-flowered house coat as she putters around and starts the coffee. it's not because she's dead; it's because she has alzheimer's.

people with alzheimer's often wander. they say they're going home. i read an article not long ago concerning that search--that they're not really going to any certain place, that they're searching for the safe place that they remember as home.

my home has been in many different states, many different dwellings, with many different people. it makes me feel safe, knowing that home is where you take it.

it also makes me wither a little, to know that the tales i tell about my legendary grandma, who won a nail-hammering competition by burying the nail in one hit, will someday flit away from my mind. that her kitchen table and those bright curtains will be dimmed and lost. the inevitability of losing her, the woman, is already made manifest in my mind. it's the loss of the idea of home, the loss of security, that is hard to fathom.

this morning i sit in my own home, secure and warm, watching my white cat loll on the dark couch, little rib cage rising and falling. i will keep this thought of home safe inside me, for as long as i can. it's my refuge, wherever i am, whoever i might be.