Essay: My lost home
The road curves and Grand Lake comes into full view for the first time. During summer, boats cruise lazily across its surface and trees, the healthiest shade of green, crowd its immense border. You settle into a comfortably awestruck stare as you cross the Pensacola dam, the world’s longest multi-arch dam. As you exit the narrow, mile-long bridge, you pass a sign, whose base is overgrown with weeds, that reads “Disney, Oklahoma. Population: Friendly.”
This tiny island in northeast Oklahoma is where I spent my first 18 years. The real population of the town’s meager 1.4 square miles is only 311, according the 2010 US Census. My childhood home sits perched on the eastern bluff, at the perfect angle so that every morning the sun’s first rays reach down to drench my mother’s immaculate flower beds with sparkling sunlight. My mother was recently promoted to be the director of special education in the Pryor Public School system. And so she sold the home she raised me in.
I stood in that home recently for the last time the last time. I never realized just how small it was, how cramped it was, how the doorways were crooked and too narrow. My voice echoed as I spoke a goodbye. The resonation of that sound felt as if wouldn’t stop.
My earliest memory of that house is my mother yelling my name from our front porch as I played in our yard. I remember endless hours of my youth in the woods beside my home with my loyal cat, Tommy beside me.
The first week we moved to our home a grey kitten appeared on our doorstep. I decided to name her Tommy even though she was a female cate because we had a female dog, and my 5-year-old self decided that I wanted another guy in the house. My father had chosen not to participate in the lives of my mother and I. The school district my mother worked in and I went to school in was a 40-minute drive from our house and so most evenings I spent with Tommy, my closest companion. After 16 years, she passed with the house.
My home held a sacred spot inside my heart. It was my safety net and my isolation. It was a paradise in the wilderness. When I left the first time for college, I thought I would miss it desperately, but I was wrong.
Instead, it existed in my mind as a secluded refuge. Every time I began to feel uncertain of my future and felt the fear of failure in my heart, that constant remained. That beautiful place is still there. Where my cat laid, belly up, in the grass soaking in the warm sun. Where soft waves still lap the shore, echoing past the empty summer homes of the wealthy to my home. Where the smell of water and dense undergrowth will always hang in the air.
As I grew older, I appreciated my upbringing so much more. I realized as I got older that my mother had struggled incredibly hard to provide for me. As a single mother and a teacher in Oklahoma, she worked every day to provide me with everything I needed to succeed. I remember her reading to me every night, and pushing me to not just try everything I could, but to excel. Without a father figure, she taught me ambition and to push myself every day to be better than the day before.
I received outstanding grades in high school and was an award-winning member of my high school’s football team. When I reached college, I found that drive existed in me in absentia of my mother. I strove to learn and be all that I knew I could. I took on leadership roles across organizations and added a major with two foreign languages. I knew that no matter how hard any one else worked, I’d work harder. I’d know more. I’d challenge myself more. I’d push past any obstacles that stood in my way, and rise higher than any of my expectations.
This May, I will graduate from the University of Oklahoma with a double major in Journalism and Letters. I helped to lead the RUF/NEKS of Oklahoma in their centennial year, and now hope to pursue a further education in law school.
All of the things my mother taught me, all of the hard lessons that I learned in my youth reflect back to me through the memory of that house. As I stride forward into the future that my hard work and dedication has bred for me, I will hold the memory of that place close to my heart.
No matter how far I get from my home, it will always exist in a state of suspended animation. Helping to remind me of how hard I have worked for all that I already have and how much I have to support me as I strive to work just as hard in pursuit of my dreams.
From now on, my life is in my own hands to do with what I please. This independence can seem both overwhelming and difficult to handle, but I know that fear will settle strong as I stand on the foundation that home helped to lay for me.
