Homebody

I have often been called a homebody — not because I do not like to travel or because I am scared to leave the confines of a house — but because a home, I have found, has the profound ability to be an encompassing place of comfort. It can be filled with reminders of people and places dearly loved, hung in photo frames on the walls; little items collected from various journeys can be placed carefully on shelves. It can grow full of candlelight in the evenings and perch blooming lilies on the centers of tables. It can echo music and laughter from room to room and make space for meals to be prepared and shared. It is a time capsule, a box preserving the memories and moments that have been deeply felt in the heart. A home feels, for me, more than a building and more than even a house, but a dwelling place — a place of peace, of steadiness, where the heart can nest itself, gathering memories and loved ones and special items for safekeeping. A home is a refuge.  

And though I am a homebody by nature, I have not only called one place home, but many places. 

My first home was a small cottage in the “M” streets. It was made of dark brown bricks, large stained glass windows, and a reaching front porch surrounded by puffy hydrangeas and live oak trees. It was the place to which my father slowly drove the Volvo wagon after leaving the hospital, and where my mother gently carried me inside and whispered, “Welcome home, my sweet.” It was the place where my father rocked me in the wooden chair outside, and my mother painted the attic walls Cinderella blue. While I may not remember all of my small years in that house, I have relived the emotions through old camcorder videos and grainy photos taken on disposable cameras, and so in every way, that home sits in my heart. When I miss my parents, I venture back there, sifting through the film photos carefully etched in my mind. I think of my father holding me, my mother rocking me to sleep, and I feel safe and loved. It was a refuge for our small family, and it is a refuge for me now.

There have been many homes since—the home we brought my little brother into, the home we shared in a small fishing village in China, the home I returned back to after high school Friday night lights, the home where my now husband picked me up for our first date when we were sixteen, the home I shared with my girlfriends in my early twenties. Though I have with each felt home the uncomfortable newness of a fresh house without any memories, and the sorrowful goodbye of leaving behind a place where so many had been made, I have unfailingly come to treasure each place. Now, it is as though they sit as perfectly kept scrapbooks, arranged in chapters in my mind, or as though each home has been picked up and placed into a travel trunk that I carry with me.

Now, I live on an Army base in South Georgia with my husband. We have spent our first year of marriage here, and in so many ways, it is unique to any other home I have known, and yet it echoes the ones I have loved before. Like my first home, this house is made of dark red brick, with ivy climbing up the side and oak trees reaching far above the roof, gifting shade from the harsh southern sun to the whole yard. Hanging baskets of pansies sway in the spring breeze on the front and side porches, and lavender wreaths hang on the screened doors. Fluffy crepe myrtles bloom pink bundles of flowers all along the side, and when I watch them sway, I think of the hydrangeas my mother planted in my first home all those summers ago. 

This is also the home from which my husband has driven away, slinging his ruck into the truck bed with one last soft smile, leaving for months of military training. It is the place to which all of his letters have been delivered, and the home of the small mailbox, into which I have longingly reached my hand in hopes of finding a torn piece of paper covered in his muddy handwriting. It is the place where we have held each other, both in fearful goodbye and truly joyous reunion. It is the kitchen we have danced in, is is the dining room we have laughed in, it is the living room we have rested in. It is the back porch, with lights strewn along and a perfect view of the meadow out back, where mourning doves and blue jays have grazed and built nests. It has been a refuge for us in every sense, a time capsule of memories that I will always hold — the first home we have shared together.

This home has held so many meaningful moments that I can hardly bring myself to leave it for the next. But when I find myself grieved by our impending goodbye, I think of when I moved out of my parents’ home before my wedding day. 

In the weeks leading up, a mother robin carefully built her nest on the top of a pillar on the back porch, in perfect view of the window over the kitchen sink. My mother and I watched the robin as she gathered sticks from around the yard and tucked each carefully in its place. Soon, she laid her eggs, and despite wind and rain or the high heat of the day, she protected them unwaveringly, always perched on top of their little blue shells. After some days, we noticed the eggs had given way to tiny, reaching, pink baby birds, and in a rhythm of provision, the mother robin constantly went out into the yard for worms, delivered them to the nest, and soars back out into the willow tree nearby. She kept watch over them from those long, swaying limbs, and as they grew, she watched them fly away. The last robin left the nest on the morning before my wedding day, as my mother and I stood together in the kitchen, reminded that soon I would do the same. Though we were sorrowful at our goodbye, we were even more full of love and joy for the life we had shared together to that point and for the gift of a home that had been the nest of all our memories.

I think of that mother robin again this year as we leave this home. I think also of the many women who have come before me in this home, having found it to be a refuge themselves. I think of my mother, who moved along with me from home to home, and has now watched me build my own. And as I think of these things, I am reminded that this will not be the last home I add to the chapter book in my mind; rather, just as the mother robin does each spring, I will find another spot tucked perfectly on a small patch of land, and gather into it new memories, and blooming flowers, and special items perched thoughtfully on shelves. So I pick up this home and place it in the travel trunk of homes well-loved in my life; I tuck these memories into the scrapbook in my mind, and I am reminded that to be a homebody is a gift because it means that I have enjoyed the fullness of a comforting home, and I am left with confidence in the profound beauty that the next home will be.