Home (A Field Guide)

On Memoir: All the places that were supposed to be home but never could be

I challenged myself to keep this piece under four hundred words. It was difficult as brevity is not my strong suit. There is so much more I could say, and still, I wanted this to be enough.

Home (A Field Guide)

i

Walk backward into your childhood. The house on Michelle Lane in California’s forgotten desert where your mother looks like fire wearing a moss-green housecoat. You can see her bird-like mouth moving, but all you can hear is the buzzing of her rage and the clicking of the handcuffs around her tiny wrists. You wait for her to come home but the next time you see her she’s behind bullet-proof glass. You’re in your father’s lap watching her mouth move over the shape of words. Words that you hope are love and home and everything is going to be okay, but you can’t hear a thing over the heavy thrum of your father’s heart beating against your back. 

Alright. That’s far enough now.
Come forward a little.
Wait. Not so fast.
What’s with all the rushing?
Here. Here it is. 

ii

The house on Route 66 that’s supposed to be home, but never could be. The one that holds your mother’s laugh in the walls but no longer holds her shape in the bed you slept in with her smelling of nicotine and sugar. The house your father fills with chemical fumes from the meth lab he’s built in the garage. Your father who feels like home in the way she never could. In the way that he is lonely and lost and quiet, and in the way his sadness is as powerful as the unrelenting Mojave sun. 

You can move forward now.
Run, if you must.
Alright, alright, slow down.
Twenty years and two thousand miles
 is far enough, don’t you think?
Stop. Here. You’ve found it.

iii

The place where the mountains are always blue and the leaves drip from the sky. The place that doesn’t know how to be anything but home. Where the wildflowers know your name and the sun shines from the fields of waist-high goldenrod. The place that’s safe enough to remember who you are. Did you ever really know? Pause and let the fireflies show you that you’re more than where you came from. Listen to the hemlocks for they’re telling the truth. Listen when they say that it’s okay to love and be loved. Can’t you hear the song of the Carolina wren? You are here. You are home. You’re allowed to be happy.

Wait. Won’t you stay awhile?
Can’t we go about this
one thing unhurried? 

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QUESTION: What does home mean to you? Have you found it?

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