Click Your Heels
I once heard there’s no place like home and I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. There are a lot of people who take the concept of home literally. They think of it as one singular place. A physical place. A front door. Four walls. Roof. That whole bit.
Home is what and how you build it. Whatever that means.
This year I turned 30 and my parents are remodeling the house I grew up in. My father keeps telling my family members it will be a whole new house when he shows them the floor plans on his desktop computer. Deep down I’m trying to make myself more upset than I am.
This will be an adjustment, for sure but it’s just a place that’s looked pretty much the same for decades. A place where a few things happened. The first place I went to after my parents left the hospital with me that one summer. The house where I started writing stories in a composition notebook. The house I drank my first beer in. The house where I cried over my first heartbreak. The house my brothers and I fought in. And the house my parents made a home.
All and all, this is the house I was able to leave with okay memories attached and go back to when I miss being a kid.
Come to think of it, I take it back when I say I’m not that upset. The infamous pink bathroom I shared with my brothers is getting redone. A tragedy. This bathroom is perfectly vintage, ugly, and spectacular. Pale pink, beige speckled, and baby blue mini tiles line the uneven floor. The tub is a darker shade of pink with a matching toilet that always seems to break. Blue-gray porcelain lines the shower walls. The caddy hanging down from the shower holds the shampoo I bought when I was a teenager. There are cracks in the walls and grout between the tiles that just won’t get clean. This small, narrow room was my favorite hiding place for when the house was too much. Where I couldn’t be bothered and I wasn’t reminded that nobody understood me.
My mother is afraid they bit off more than they can chew with this project, and my father is excited but nervous about how it’s going to look. They spent the last few years putting bandaids on the house they worked so hard to buy and even harder to keep. Spending hours deciding whether to fix what’s broken or pack up and find something else. It’s a testament to their relationship.
My parents have been together since they were teenagers entering their adulthood. Not high school sweethearts but close enough. A summer fling before the rest of their lives. I recently read what my mother wrote in my father’s yearbook. There was a line that could be in a movie.
“Out of all the people I probably won’t see anymore I'll probably miss you the most..please write and call.”
After my mother finished her degree to become a registered nurse, she toyed with the idea of becoming a traveling nurse. Jumping from state to state being whomever she wanted to be surrounded by people who didn’t know her. I wonder what or who she was running away from back then. When I asked her why she didn’t do it she said had too much going on at home. And by “too much going on,” she meant my father. A few years ago she told me what he said when she told him she was thinking about leaving.
”I want you to do whatever you want and I will support whatever decision you make…but just know I might not be waiting for you when you get back.”
No ultimatums. No guilt. No manipulation. The decision was hers with no impending resentment. Just honesty. I commend my father’s emotional intelligence at such a young age. I admire my mother for making the right decision all on her own. It was the start of a quality foundation.
In two years they’ll celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. I have never met two people who love each other more. Despite all the lows and because of all the highs. They grew up together. And even though I have never heard them refer to one another as each other’s best friend, it’s something that you understand the minute you meet them.
My parents still don’t know where they are going to stay while the house is being fixed. Regardless of where my father and mother sleep at night as long as they’re in the same bed, they’re home.
On my birthday my father mentioned his old coworker’s daughter was born on the same day as me. He had to say she was married. Nothing else about her. She’s married.
Earlier in the day, he mentioned how many children my grandmother had when she was my age. It was the '60s and she worked nights in a factory. The neighbor boy I graduated with married a girl from town and has three kids, so times changing isn’t the most valid argument.
And although he’s never said it, he believes I’m incomplete because I don’t have anybody to share my home with. Not just a husband or a partner but children, too. I know my father thinks something is missing from my life because I don’t know what it’s like to hold my child in my arms. To care for them. To nurture them. To worry about them. It upsets him that I don't know that kind of love and he’s afraid I never will—or worse, never want to.
He doesn’t understand why I am alone and it terrifies him that I might always be.
I have a friend who sometimes thinks I mean the town we grew up in when I say I plan to stay home. She gets confused that I don’t refer to my parent’s house as home anymore. When I say my house, I mean my studio on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Right by Zabars and sandwiched between Riverside Park and Central Park. Where every so often I pass by celebrities trying to be regular people. It doesn’t matter that my apartment is falling apart and I can’t fit a full-size couch in there comfortably. Or if the median age of the neighborhood gets older every year because I too am getting older every year. I’ll die in this apartment until I find someone who loves me enough to split the rent somewhere else or if I jump a tax bracket. Whichever comes first.
In my college dorm, I mastered the art of pretending to love myself when it became difficult to get out of bed during my sophomore year. The weight of my life felt so heavy it was hard to breathe. I knew something had to change or else I’d never have a shot of living the life I know I should and the life I deserved. I heard the phrase fake it ‘til you make it and decided to try. And I have to admit it was a lot more fun than being miserable.
It’s taken me a couple of years but recently all that pretending made me really, really like myself.
I’ve spent hours in my tiny apartment blasting music and dancing in my underwear. Looking at myself in the mirror letting myself know that every part of me is attractive. Once in a while, I’ll invite a friend or a few over for dinner even though there aren’t enough places to sit. I have found the ability to talk myself out of it after a bad week. I remember how lucky I am to be where I am. These moments in my little oasis remind me that I am as good as people tell me.
Whenever I visit a new city or a beach town I convince myself I can retire there. I picture my life in smaller places. Less going and more staying. I love New York and plan to stay here as long as possible. But there is something about slowing down when my body, mind, and soul change that makes me look forward to the future and where I’ll end up.
After all is said and done home to me is sitting on a barstool beside my best friend. I don’t mean in a sad, alcoholic way — I promise. What I mean is in a way that celebrates our friendship. That celebrates our womanhood. That celebrates us.
We spend hours commenting on the world that passes us by. Sharing stories we didn’t know about each other or talking through new ideas. Laughing. Just laughing. There is nothing better than laughing with your best friend. And every so often we help each other overcome life’s qualms that are weighing on our minds. There’s no better comfort.
It’s up to us to construct our sense of home. Take bits and pieces of every person, place, and thing. To fix what’s broken or pack up and find something else.
Home is people. Home is familiarity. Home is that feeling of comfort. Home is what you build it.
There’s no place like home.
