With My Marriage on Pause, I’m Redefining “Home”
When where you are is in between
When Paul* and I separated after 34 years of marriage, my adult daughter, who lives a day’s drive distant, seemed at first to take it in stride. But after a few weeks, I could tell she was screening my calls.
And then one day she called me back to explain, “I don’t know where home is anymore, but it isn’t there.”
Her comment, served with a spoonful of wistful nostalgia and another of acerbic judgment, hit me with the force of truth. I don’t know where home is anymore either.
I know what is not home.
I’m living in a tiny, sparsely furnished apartment under the eaves just a few miles from Paul. It’s the sort of space writers dream about — a garret steeped in solitude and silence. A room of one’s own.
I’ve decorated it with a few totems and one photo of each of my kids, but the space still clearly belongs to my landlord. It’s a safe landing spot with everything I need to settle comfortably into new routines. Indeed I’m grateful for less property to maintain and fewer people to cramp my style. But it isn’t home.
When I return to the house Paul and I shared for 18 years, where he still lives, and where our children mostly grew up, I wander from room to room — so much space! — and feel myself drift. I notice the cat hair rolling under the bed and the cobwebs in the corners. I notice the old battered door we never replaced and the loose tile on the stairway. I notice that the bedrooms are too small and the bathrooms are all shared. I notice the secondhand furniture and the outdated art on the walls.
Then I run my hand over the back of the red sofa — my last reupholstery project. I want the sofa, but not the house. I want to be friends with Paul, but not live here. Neither the marriage, nor the house are truly mine anymore.
Back in my rental, my mom calls from one of the flyover states, where it’s been snowing for three days. Most of my siblings still live there, in a landscape dwarfed by a spectacular blue sky rimmed with evening light and stunted trees. I remember the winter fields with fondness, the rows of standing corn marching like a battalion of tattered soldiers, the cat tails and sumac huddling close to the river. But I no longer belong there.
The people are too white and too polite. Last time I visited, I sat awkwardly in my mother’s dining room waiting for my brother to finish telling a story about the last pheasant hunt and forgetting to help my sister dish up pie in the kitchen. After dinner, they sat around and watched the local sports news on cable. I released a long breath through clenched teeth and checked my phone to see if I could get a departing flight out a day sooner than I’d planned.
I’ve lived below the Mason-Dixon line for more than half my life now, but I’ve never acquired a taste for sweet tea or grits. Paul and I came here for his first real job, and we tried to put down roots. We raised our children here and became friends with their friends’ parents. When our kids left for college, I started working from home for a company headquartered in New York and Paul spent even more time away from home at his office.
I lost touch with my community, both the people and the place. I lived online, a business voice clothed in an email, or a friendly faceless colleague “Zooming” in for a virtual meeting. The roots we’d started with good intentions frayed and rotted away.
I’ve read a bunch of blogs that are some variation on the old saying “home is where the heart is,” but that isn’t really working for me either. My heart is “at large” these days. I feel as free as a floating dandelion seed, and often I like that liberation. No one expects me to be here at a certain time or to call if I change my plans. I can do what I like, when I like, or just catch a ride on the tail of opportunity.
I enjoy spending time with friends, doling out my minutes like spare change on Scrabble games and day hikes and book clubs. But home can’t just be how you spend your time, or even simply who you spend time with. Not bound by family or fealty, I’m keeping company with folks, but they aren’t keeping me in a place called home.
National Geographic says “Home is a way of organizing space in our minds. There’s home, and everything else is not home.” That’s enigmatic at best. I have friends who travel a lot. For them home is that perfect pair of comfortable walking shoes in a well-worn suitcase or another destination crossed off the bucket list.
The space in my mind is a clutter of question marks, a disorganized geography. I’m not hungry for the views or customs or adventures I might find somewhere far away. And I’m also not feeling restless or bored enough to leave where I am.
My writer friend suggests that I journal about what makes me feel at home. When I ask her to elaborate, she doesn’t say “what makes you feel safe or cared for.” She says, “What makes you feel alive and present and amazed?” I sigh, uttering the ache to answer those questions.
It is an impatient sigh, like watching the play of light on a bowl of fruit, waiting for peaches to ripen. For now, the winter trees are bare. The days are short and cold.
What I long for is sweetness and warmth, fizz and wonder.
The tang beneath the rind of my routines.
The crackle of connection with kindred souls.
The surprise of a falling star splashing the night sky with brilliance and landing so close you think you can find its burning ember.
That’s home.
