Z is home. He has been here long enough to have settled back in, to be part of the fabric of our day to day again rather than a sparkling exception. He seems remarkably both tired and hungry, as if catching up on a semester’s worth of sleep and eating. I am still buoyant with the excitement of his presence, quietly delighting in having all my chicks under my wing once again. I notice, in small and larger ways, that this year has changed him, that he has grown in so many ways. The eight months away have provided a space for him to feel the absence of home, to miss the comfort and familiarity of the rhythms of our lives together, to figure out what he wants to hold on to, what he wants to shift and transform, and what he wants to leave behind. Although I still have some slightly hovering oversight—how did he do in his classes? has he eaten? what’s the progress on the summer job search?—for the most part, the constant buzz of worry has quieted. We both know he can manage his life on his own, away from my reminders and nudges and occasional pestering. And that is an accomplishment we both hold with pride and relief. What a strange relationship, this parent-child one, in which our goal is to let go, to watch them take flight on their own. And yet, it is so very awe-inspiring, so beautiful to watch those wings spread wide across the sky and fly off into their own path.
For just about 30 years, I have considered Boston my home. I moved here as a college student and while we briefly flirted with the idea of a cross-country move, we have never been more than a subway ride away from the city that I loved from my first snowy, March visit. D and I worked hard to make each of the apartments we shared a place we felt at home. A place that we felt able to be ourselves—to cook, relax, work, entertain, and be together. His love of light and capturing life on film meant our walls were adorned with his photography—first of our lives and the landscapes around us and later, of our children as they grew, our extended family as it expanded. Our kitchen was never big enough for all the small appliances, artistic serving dishes, pitchers, mugs, utensils that we had to assist in cooking things we loved to eat and share. Between graduate school and my insatiable love of reading, our homes were always filled with books. Books I had read and loved and wanted to keep near me to remind me of the world that story opened up, books I was reading for class, books I hoped to read but hadn’t yet found the moment, slim volumes of poetry from my undergraduate studies, and novels I’d moved lovingly from my childhood home to college dorms to each new apartment. Eventually, the majority of my books would end up in the basement of Harvard Bookstore, priced to find a home in someone else’s library, moved to make way for the new library of children’s books purchased with the hope of raising little ones who would share my thirst for stories from other worlds, other experiences.
With the exception of Z’s first year of life, spent in an apartment closer to the city, all three of my children have only known one home. We raised them in the first house we bought, the one that we thought would be the starter home, the house we thought we’d sell after five or so years and find one with less stairs, fewer projects, a bigger kitchen, a nicer backyard. But we found so much more than a house. We moved into a neighborhood that became our extended family, with whom we shared butter and sugar, holidays, advice, support, camping trips, dog walks, and so much love. With family far away, we made friends who became more like aunts, uncles, and cousins to our children, dear friends to us than simply neighbors. I had names to add to the required emergency contact info on those school permission slips. Names of people in whom I had absolute trust in making critical decisions for my children in the event D or I were not available. Home was so much more than what was contained in the walls of our hundred-year-old, New England house. It was a community, a village of people who looked out for and loved our children along with their own.
I had grown up with that kind of village. I knew the comfort, the ease of having more than one house in which I felt at home. At having friends’ parents whose smiles said, “We are so glad you are here. You are always welcome.” I had teachers who believed in me, supported me, and helped me forge a path to college, to the life I now lead. Adults who looked out for my well-being, who wanted the best for me.
For most of my childhood, I lived in the house in which my mom had grown up. My sister and I spent hours playing in the woods behind our house, following the creek that ran through our backyard and eventually, all the way down to Philadelphia. We never made it far, as the woods surrounding the creek quickly became impassable with brambles and untamed growth. But we built fairy houses and made up fantastical stories about elves and wizards and all sorts of magical creatures who lived in the woods. The embankment directly behind our house was quite steep, and while we had made a winding path that switchbacked down the embankment, one cold, November afternoon, I slipped and fell down the embankment into the cold creek below. I was fine, but scared. My cousin, who was several years older than me, somehow carried me in my sopping wet winter coat and boots, up the hill to the warmth of our kitchen.
When I was in my first year at college, my parents sold that house and moved down south. They returned to the Philadelphia suburbs where both my mom and I had grown up just about a year later, but the home of my childhood had been lost. I started to create my own sense of home, started building a space that brought me comfort and ease and respite from the world. I could be intentional about what I wanted, try out different things to figure out what it was that made me feel most at home.
I would realize, of course, that just being with my parents and siblings could create that same sense of belonging, togetherness, being held, that I had felt as a child. But it took some years of building relationships as adults, of renegotiating the patterns of interaction we had taken on as children growing up to fit who we were as adults, of recognizing what we could fairly expect from each other.
Home became something I built with D and eventually, our boys. It was the place that we created together to grow as people; raise little humans; expand our circle of friends; hold sadness and heartache, joy and love, longing and wonder.
And so, as Z is home for his first summer after living away, I know in my heart, that this will not always be his primary home. I know that he has already started thinking about and creating a space away from us that feels comforting and safe, familiar and restful. My hope is that we have provided him with a template from which he wants to start. That we have provided him with the sense of what home means, feels like, is.
That he knows he is always welcome here, that we will always welcome him and provide him with a place to rest his head, his worries, his soul. That this home would not have existed without his endless chatter and train tables and Lego sets that took over the dining room table.
That all three of these boys know that every day they are here is the best day with them.
All photos were taken by the exceptional Dana Giuliana, unless otherwise noted.
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