When I Think of Home

When I think of home
I think of a place where there`s love overflowing
I wish I was home
I wish I was back there with the things I been knowing

(from “Home,” Charlie Smalls, THE WIZ)

“God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is!” Macrina Wiederkehr

But where is home? At church this morning, I was reminded that Mother Earth is my home. Earlier, as I looked at the only message that had arrived in my email mailbox during the night, I discovered that a friend here had awakened in the night, fearful that the physical pain she was experiencing might be a heart attack, and though she didn’t call me, she wrote me asking that I call her when I read the message. Fearing that she might die, she had left her front door unlocked, and in the message she told me who should get the kitten she had adopted only recently.

I’ve been wondering why my heart felt so heavy lately. August 14 would have been my daddy’s 99th birthday. The older I get, the more he and my family are on my mind—even though he died 29 years ago on the first day of spring. My mother’s 93rd birthday is coming up—one week to the day before my own birthday in September. She died the first day of February 2007, the year that I stuck my head through a crack in life, daring to be so bold as to create a life here in Santa Fe. Such boldness is not part of my upbringing.

The courageous ways of my daddy as a young man—forced to make his way in the years of the Great Depression—were not pronounced in my genes. Our mother, exercising her German upbringing, taught us not to venture out—to indeed stay near the nest. Only five years ago, as my mother worried about me driving to New Mexico for a summer visit, I reminded her that I might have moved to New Mexico in 1967 to take a teaching job (if I had had the courage). “I remember,” added my oldest sister, who was sitting nearby, “Daddy was all for it, and Mother clipped your wings.” How odd it seems in retrospect, a 24-year-old man not having the courage to “leave the nest”.

This past weekend was the annual Indian Market here in Santa Fe. Hundreds of artists displayed their work for thousands of seekers, from all over the U. S., at least. I walked through all of the displays early Saturday morning, and one of the things that struck me most was the presence of family. In many instances, what appeared to be generations of a family, quietly sat behind their displays of silver jewelry and pottery and weavings. Many of the older women (those who would be perceived as the matriarchs) were dressed in traditional garb, their hair pulled back in a recognizable bun, and wearing velvet blouses adorned with silver buttons, skirts almost touching the ground. Here and there I saw my own mother. As I walked around the market, the presence of family—not without conflict and strife, I’m certain—was so real. Should I conclude that my own mother’s tribal instincts were not so different than what I was witnessing? Ultimately, it is all about family and connecting, however we end up defining it.

I’ve seen my own mother a lot recently—frail and being helped from the car, making her way up the aisle on the arm of a son or daughter, or grandson or granddaughter. What I haven’t seen is Mother laughing, younger, still full of hope and promise. I know she’s here. I just haven’t opened my eyes enough to recognize her. I wanted and I needed to go away after our mother died, to exercise the courage to be on my own. And having done so, I know that—as I was told by a priest friend a couple of years ago—“home is where you are”.

At church yesterday, the person sitting next to me asked about our friend, the one who sent me the email during the night. I knew she would not be in church. When I described what had happened, that is frightening, my chair neighbor replied. And then she (divorced and living alone in her 70s) described an event in her own life recently where a middle-of-the-night experience filled her with fear that she might choke to death—alone. She, too, expressed a dread that she might not be discovered quickly and that she would lay dead, for maybe days. What is this fear we have? We choose our separateness, our aloneness. Someone gave this advice recently: “Get a dog!” “We already have two cats,” the other replied. And so on.

Family, home, what does this mean? I know what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have the courage to be alone, if that is what life is offering us. It doesn’t mean that we don’t have the courage to be different or more than we have convinced ourselves is our lot in life. It doesn’t mean that we saddle ourselves with reasons for not making new choices. Family does mean—if we are blessed to have been brought up in love—that we always feel close to our upbringing. We always feel connected, regardless of our current circumstance. The instinctive need to feel connected and stay connected is imprinted on us. I am away from all that I knew for the first 64 years of my life.

I am alone, by choice, even though I know I am not alone. Most of us are blessed to have family and friends who care about us, even though we sometimes question this. It is at those times that I remind myself to remind myself that I get what I give. If I want to be loved, I must love. If I want to be needed, I must need. “I'm not asking to be loved. I want to love.” So reads one of the inscriptions on the angel who hovers protectively at the start of the labyrinth walk in front of St. Francis Basilica here in Santa Fe. Loving—that is my assignment this day.

When I Think of Home—Santa Fe, New Mexico (August 23, 2010)
R. Harold Hollis