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You Won’t Appreciate Going Home for the Holidays Until You Can’t
On the impermanence of home, and what happens when we lose it
“Seeking to forget makes exile all the longer; the secret of redemption lies in remembrance.” — Richard von Weizsäcker
In 2016, I sold my dream house within a month of my divorce. How lucky to have lived in a “dream house,” and how unlucky to have the marriage and family come to an end.
Actually, it’s hyperbole and a bit of a misnomer to say it was unlucky to sell the house. It was prudent to sell the house, both financially and physically. (The yard itself was almost an acre. I had to ride a tractor to mow it. I could barely start the thing and would cry once I got going, dripping with sweat and overwhelmed with the care of so much: children, animals, and a large, very old house.)
But in selling the house, I risked something, and in some sense lost something that was of great value to me. A home.
It wasn’t the first time this had happened to me.
“When you are done with school, I am done with you.”
This is something my dad said to me in what I now know to be a pivotal and dark moment in our family history. I’m not sure what I did or said to prompt such a statement. It wasn’t the usual way we talked to one another. I was a college senior. Maybe I conveyed some lackadaisical ease or entitlement. It was Christmas break before my college graduation in May. He sat up in bed, beside my mom, watching the news. I’d just gotten home from being out with friends. When he said it, I was taken aback. There was something in his tone, his expression. I took him very, very seriously.
I didn’t know that as he said this, his marriage was crumbling. He knew it, but I didn’t. Perhaps he feared for the future.
I don’t know if my dad remembers that moment or not. To him, it may have been a passing aggravation — something he said offhandedly as we parents do when we’re angry with our kids. But for me, it became the moment after which nothing felt the same.
Along with their marriage, what ended in the subsequent several years was the place and time I knew as home.
