we are always home somewhere.
Mama I want to go home. I want my house. I looked around and I forgot where I was, I thought I was at my other house and I wasn’t.
{immediate persuasion mode, the artless act of not validating}
Honey, this house is so much fun, though! There are more stairs! And there’s a doorbell! And look, look at the glowing ball of sun sinking into the sea behind us.
She turns to look. She sighs. So do I.
We’re always home when we are together, Mia. We are each others home.
~~~
Okay. So I’m a fucking liar because as soon as she said that I was thinking, HOLY SHIT. She is so right. We lost her house. WE lost THEIR home. And suddenly I panicked. We should have figured out a way to have kept it. He could have worked every weekend for six months. And nights. And I could have gathered all my talents and got a job stripping at the Big Beautiful Bush and Wandering Stretch Marks Gentleman’s Club two nights a week and rolled in the cash. She knows better, that WAS her home. And we lost it. Gone. Now all it is a vacant place with apple trees that need our hands and a 1400 square feet that need me to go and give a good final sweep through.
~~~
Exactly two years ago, I was celebrating the sale of our first home as a family. And now I am mourning the sale of our second home. Good? Bad? Misplaced. There is no home for me. And all I do is search for it, for that cozy spot where all my family beings are a spit away and the walls are earthen and the air is clean and my words provide enough and the love lives so hard and wild our hairs never lay flat on our heads.
I talk to people who tell me I was living their dream; the falling apart farmhouse in the middle of nowhere where horses neigh and the cows graze and my kale went superfreak wild everywhere. But that dream ended like so many people’s in this country; kicking and screaming economy, shady mortgage deals, over-excited families with longing. I am no different than anyone else. It’s just ironic that we wanted to live rurally for simplicity and life got very fucking complicated very quickly. Simple means different things.
~~~
The city brings to me newness, much appreciated newness. Magenta hues and smells of fennel growing from the cracks in sidewalks. It’s bikers, and vegan punks and dreads and fancy pants and patagonia and the smell of fishermen’s skin. It’s barely using any gas. It’s walking. It’s drop-in friends. In a week our home as become a HUB and every night our red, gold and green totally gaudy porch chandelier lights the way for friends who come by with wine and logs of salami and big smiles, loving our new space as much as we do. I am not sure how it happened but the view, and I know I MAY have mentioned this before is FUCKING UNREAL and it feels good to just sit and drink and look and laugh and settle.
Last night we were walking the hills and noticing all the beautiful and lovingly kept Victorians, bungalows, craftsmen’s and modern oasis and we were like WHO LET THE RAGGAMUFFINS in THIS hood? We laughed our raggy asses up to the crest and breathed in the electric orange and royal purple and gave thanks. He grabbed my ass. I gave his package a quick squeeze. Home.
~~~
But really. I want to go back Home. What does this mean? I don’t know. I am coming to understand that this earth is our home but we all come from beyond and have met here in these bodies to figure out how to love as fleshy bloody types, how to honor and cherish and open our hearts until they are just goo and they all ooze together and we finally can stop ripping each other to shreds and remember we all have ONE HEART. We all breath the same air. We are all made of the same water. We all disappear into Space sooner or later. I want my home to be with you. I want us to bask in the light. I want us to stop wanting. To need nothing but each others sparks exchanging on a walk along the shore. I believe we can do this. I believe WE ARE.
~~~
And while I am being honest here. Let me say a couple more things about visiting with the whales that I didn’t say because I like to candy coat practically everything and make life into a warm fuzzy. Okay, here I go.
THEY ARE FUCKING DISAPPERAING. And I was one of those DESIRING types who has wanted to see them forever so that I can learn from them, experience their beauty, feel safe and free FROM them. And really what they need is US. They need us to say: You are okay. I know your food supply is all fucked up and the water is disgusting and vibrations from this world are chaotic, but you are okay and here, take some of me, pass me on your anxiety and fear, beautiful black and white creatures. You need and deserve it more than me. Your world is getting so small and just know you are loved and safe. You are home. The sea is your home.
I feel much better now.
~~~
Some visions of home.
my bright lights.
zen shorts.
always reflecting back at me.
blessing the musical creation space with a dear old friend.
wondering and wandering and just enjoying the ride.
I think you totally captured the essence of M and S in that top picture. They are such complementary opposites ; )
I hope I get the chance to come share that view with you, AND SOON!
Comment by Heather — September 16, 2009 @ 8:48 pm
beautiful. just beautiful.
Comment by Melinda — September 16, 2009 @ 9:04 pm
You. Are. Beautiful.
Comment by gearhead mama — September 17, 2009 @ 2:00 am
God woman, if you keep on writing stuff like this I’m gonna come up there, pick you up and carry you back here to keep with me for always. You write like nobody else, pure Marybeth, which is why I eat up every word and sit here sighing.
Oh, and if you ever decided to put your mind to it, I think you make some serious magic with that camera too. Just sayin….
Comment by Jeanette — September 17, 2009 @ 6:55 am
J,
you cutie pie you.
mind? what mind?
camera-shmamra
xxoo
mb
Comment by misplacedmama — September 17, 2009 @ 7:06 am
The whole trip is a trip home, sugar. Can’t make a wrong turn. But come see me anyway.
Comment by Karen Maezen Miller — September 17, 2009 @ 4:25 pm
Hello,
Thanks so much for that last lovely picture of you. They are all great photos… but so nice to see your face.
I have moved five times in four years. I find myself often wishing… “I just want to go home”. Then wondering in the next breath exactly where that is.
Have you ever found yourself on a street (Forsyth, University, or Martin Luther) and had to flip through your mind like a rolodex to remember exactly which place you are in now?
Thank goodness for those three sisters and your main-squeeze. You’ll always be home with them.
Comment by Becca — September 18, 2009 @ 5:28 am
I love the gypsy folk who pull up and immediately own the place with their wild hair and big fires, happy music and outdoor showers. No one seems to be quite as comfortable in their stiff urban bullshit facade of a life as those gypsies do. Your gypsy girls picked you for the caravan…kiss them for me and let me know if you ever need a tambourine player for your band. Nothing is ever lost in this life…we are simply gifted different vistas. xxoo
Comment by marinah — September 18, 2009 @ 6:01 am
you touch me so fierce, i feel it.
thank you for that.
tears released. breath full. life good.
Comment by jessamyn — September 20, 2009 @ 11:30 pm
Thanks for the Deep Laugh and The Deep cry.
click-click the heels…
Me too… I just wanna go Home too.
Comment by Mickey AKA Studio Terrafemina — September 25, 2009 @ 5:40 am
Hi MB, I’ve been a long-time, on-and-off-follower of you and your blog. I always feel refreshed when I come here and read your magical words. I read a lot of blogs, and I don’t think anyone writes like you do.
I just wanted to say that I know how painful it is to have to leave a home, for any reason. We’ve dragged our kids around the last two years — lived in 4 states in that time — and I’ve truly come to believe that kids can be happy wherever their family is. They certainly will experience loss, but I think as long as their loved ones are around them, they are ok. Or at least that’s what I’ve told myself! (Thankfully, our gypsy-hood has ended, and we are happily settled for-evah in San Francisco.)
Oh, and I also wanted to say that I hope it makes you feel maybe a LITTLE good that she misses the other home, as I think it means you guys created a space where she was happy and felt loved and had fun! If you hadn’t created a HOME for you guys, she wouldn’t miss it.
Comment by Rebekah — October 1, 2009 @ 12:24 am
thank you. I felt it all.
Comment by Nat — October 6, 2009 @ 6:19 pm