Something got me thinking about a one of the authors in residence at grad school — I will NOT put his name here, since he’s the type to have Google Alerts emailed to him every time his name comes up… But I was just thinking about how much I hated his class, with all its crazy undercurrents as we all sat and tried not to stare at each other around the long conference table. Twenty or so people either acolytes of his, or silently seething at him (or at someone else, in the case of Nat and Georgette) (Still don’t quite get what all THAT was about…). So many of us hated it…but it gave me some interesting moments.
(This is as accurate an account as I can make of what was on my paper, doodles and all.)
“…but trailing clouds of glory do we come/ from God who is our home.” – Wordsworth
Home.
No matter how much time I spend on writing the word in pretty print, neat cursive, curlicues of calligraphy, it doesn’t change the fact that I’m not always sure of the location of ‘home’.
Think of the word:
“We’re going ‘home’ for Thanksgiving.”
Home has always been where my mother’s people are from (why aren’t they my people too?), where it is slow and hot, and the streets are edged not with gravel but crushed oyster shells. ‘Home’ is from where we wanted to return, as bored, hot, somewhat frightened children, “Mama, when are we going to go back to America?”
Louisiana is not home. My mother’s people are not ‘home.’
Home was never, never my father’s people. Not his two sons, who I called Dad’s sons, they no brothers of mine, not his evil mother, who doted on my eldest sister and hated me. Not them. My grandmother draped plastic on the couches and every bed of hers I slept on was made with rubber sheets. No home there.
Home… When I think of home, when I’m tired and feeling homeless, I go to you, you’re where my heart is…” If home is where the heart is, home is rather mobile – I follow it, and it follows me. ‘Home’ is applying to PhD programs, and wherever he gets in, we’ll settle. There is not so much history time-wise in this version of home, but there is a comfort, a security which belies location and architecture. But before him, ‘home’ was…
The certain crackle of my father’s arthritic knees; too many years of Old-Man basketball -. He would walk stiff-legged down the hall, kicking up the chronic angers that settled like dust on the floor of our 1960’s 3 bdrm. Bungalow. ‘Home’ was the slap of the screened door on a school morning as we three marched out and stood by the car for final inspection: hair? Check. Homework? Check. Dress length? Shoes shined? Standing up straight? Check. Check. Check. ‘Home’ was the sound of a plane high overhead, slicing blue through a summer morning; a someday sound… coming, coming, (please God) to take me away.
