Pushing 50: Home

I made a comment a little while back on the blog Grown and Flown. I said, “Maybe home is where you have loved.”

I was without a home recently. I own a house but without a job I wasn’t able to pay the mortgage so I rented it out and stayed with – we’ll call him a friend. He didn’t ask for rent, he understood I was stuck, he was kind to me. I was there for a little over two years.

I could never settle in. It was never home to me.

None of my things were there. I thought that might be my problem so I went to where my stuff was stored and dug out some photos of the kids, a few of my favorite ornaments and those kitchen gadgets that I feel are essential. Still it wasn’t home.

I considered that without my boys there it could never feel quite right to me. So I invited them over for dinners, for Christmas, for coffee. Their visits were uncomfortable. They were out of territory: not my house, not their house. They couldn’t just traipse in and out, turn on the T.V., raid the fridge.

Nothing seemed to make my friend’s house feel like my home. Unable to pay my own way on a freelance income, I always felt like a guest. It wasn’t a space where I could just rearrange furniture or paint walls or have friends drop by.

He never said I should go. He never said I should stay.

Finally, last August, I took a job 800 miles away.

I rent a mobile home in a little park on the edge of town. All that came with me was what I could stuff into my hatchback. I have purchased almost everything else from the thrift store: blankets, dishes, a microwave. I have inherited two beds – one acts as a couch in my living room. My friend at work gave me her old television.

Two of my kids came for Christmas. They flopped on the couch, left coffee cups lying around and raided the fridge. We ate dinners around the kitchen island. I only have two stools that are counter height, so the third person (we took turns) sat very low in a fold-up basket chair from Walmart. It was fabulous.

When I walk through the door every night after work I know I’ll be alone all night, but I also know that I can relax and move freely in my own space.

I admit that there are nights when I wallow in self-pity.

But.

I am also taking this empty time in my life to explore who I am. For the first time in my life I am not being a mother or a girlfriend or a wife or a daughter. I’m learning to accept my life decisions and forgive myself my mistakes.

I am learning to be me. To love me.

Maybe that’s why this place is starting to feel like home.