Leavings and Returns
When we moved into our high-rise apartment building, we had two children at home, one on the east coast in college, one on the east coast in graduate school, and one — the oldest — living here in Seattle, working and making her way in the wider world. When we sold and left our house there were only four of us in the family witness to the process, and the change. Being present for the transition meant that by the time our college student came home for a short summer visit, we were well-settled into the new location, lifestyle and mindset of our downtown existence. We had been here long enough to know to open the windows very early in the day and leave them open all day when it was sunny, to keep the temperature comfortable. We knew that the light on the button for the 25th floor was burned out and which morning the cleaning crew would be vacuuming the hallways. We also had been here long enough to know how long it took to walk to about fifteen different locations downtown, and which side of the street to walk back on after dark (the one with the fire station on it.)
But what was untested thus far was how it would seem, and how it would feel, to our daughters who had not yet come home. Would it even feel like home?
The concept of what makes a home is one we’d talked about a lot over the years: we all agreed that it clearly wasn’t the home per se, but rather the people in it, and the relationships between those people. And yet was it shortchanging reality to say that the place itself didn’t play a role?
For a number of years my primary work was as an interior design writer and photographer. I found creative homes and drove there, pen and camera in hand, to document how those families came to that particular home, and especially how they made it feel like theirs. It was thoroughly enjoyable work, and fed my deep fascination with psychology and this concept of “home.”
I interviewed families who lived on islands, in homes they’d built themselves; carving symbolic pictures over their front doors, and lining their shelves with found objects dug out from their front yards and gathered up from the slippery seaweed-covered beaches. I spoke with a woman who had traveled the world and finally settled — practically against her own will — into a rented home she did not own, but nonetheless into which she’d devoted months and years of her blood, sweat and tears, until its colors and energy jibed with what she felt when she explored the world. I sat down with a couple who had thoughtfully, with exquisite and excruciating attention to detail, brought an exhausted, historical farmhouse up out of the dull of its own dust into gleaming, oil-rubbed splendor.
Afterwards, when I’d said my goodbyes and drove home from peninsulas, or over mountain passes, or slowly up long, hot freeways, I wrestled with what I’d just experienced, and what I believed to be true: if “home” truly was about who lived there, than why did we invest so much of ourselves into the physical aspect of our shelters, themselves? Why did every civilization, no matter how remote, decorate their homes? Why was a shell put on a shelf, or entire rooms torn apart and put back together again? Recently I’ve wondered why, when I drive past the long lines of tents set up along the sidewalks in many parts of Seattle, each one is a bit different; some with crates arranged outside the tent flaps, an improvised table between. Some with neatly tied-down tarps and concrete blocks decorated with colored bottled within each square. These tents house “the homeless.” In what ways do they feel homeless, and in what ways do they not?
If we lived in our 3800 square foot home when my daughter left that year for school, and lived in a 1200 square foot apartment when she came home, what effect would that have? Were we, her family, truly enough to make her feel not only at home but at home? Or would she feel like her soft place to land had suddenly been replaced with something hard, and strange, and uncomfortable? She no longer had any of her things in the apartment: they were stored in a storage room a few miles away. She didn’t even have a bedroom anymore. Did it matter? Would it matter? And if it did matter, how would it manifest itself? In effect, what I really needed to know was whether our decision — mine and my husband’s — to take action on one of our wants and desires, would inadverdently cause our children to come home less. After all, we had bought our house years before precisely so that it would house all seven of us, when all seven were home. I knew the comfort of knowing you could always go home. Something about it allowed you to explore, and soar. It also allowed you to come back. Had we jeopardized this?
Much like those putting colored bottles outside their tents, and the families I had interviewed when on the job, we had thought very hard about what “things” we should retain and bring with us, when we radically downsized. It interested me that there were certain things that seemed critical to bring, that didn’t serve a functional purpose. Yet some of those non-functional items also didn’t make the cut. As an interior design journalist I had been led slowly through home after home, listening to families describe what this object meant to them and why that object not only was there, but why it had been placed in such a central, highlighted position. In nearly every case, the objects were those which had been made, or received. Often it was both: something made by someone meaningful to them, and then given to them as a gift. These were the objects which remained: those necessary to make the house or apartment the person lived in feel, truly, like home.
We were no different. I found myself keeping the piece of driftwood my son had found on a fun, exploration-filled day at the beach, a curvy wooden bowl given to me by my oldest sister, and a sky-blue vase given to me by my other sister. My husband kept the heavy vintage calendar passed down in his family, and a sand drawing given to him by his mom after she took a cruise around the world. In our living room is a coffee table made by a couple in West Seattle, and a painting found in the basement of my husband’s work, with a beautiful and fascinating story behind it. There are the shell necklaces, swirled in a ceramic bowl, given to us by my parents from their trip to Tahiti. There’s the painted platter I bought in a market in Spain and the block-print of a bull I purchased from a mysterious woman in a European castle. On our windowsill are two small figures I made out of clay, and the painting at the end of the hall is one of an underwater volcano, painted by our son.
But our daughter from college, and our daughter in graduate school, would come home and sleep in either their brother’s room, or their sister’s. They didn’t have their own dressers anymore, so they’d keep their clothes in their suitcase. The apartment, once we moved everything in, was recognizable. We hadn’t bought anything new, and the items which had made the cut were ones we had all seen and used. They would come in and sit on the same couch, in front of the same coffee table, with the same dining room table and that magical painting found in the basement above it. It was important to me that they know each item in the apartment. If the location (suburbia to city) and very structure (house to apartment) had changed, the essentials, I felt, hadn’t. There was us: the family, and these comparatively few, deeply recognizable objects.
When both daughters came home, separately, we gave each of them tours. We showed them our six rooms, the garbage chute down the hall, the second floor lounge, pool, and hot tub. We showed them the exercise room with its ellipticals and free weights. We introduced them to the wonderful building staff on the ground floor and we showed them how to use the fob to get in and out of the building. Neither of them said much when we showed them around: that part of things didn’t fit with “home” as they knew it. And so we retreated quickly back to the apartment itself: to the objects we were all so familiar with, to the table that still had the many deep imprints of words and drawings in its soft wood. We retreated back to us, the family.
It was there where we continued our connections over tea and coffee and morning breakfast sandwiches. It’s there where our dog did his crazy, goofball stunts that left us laughing and shaking our heads. There in the apartment we played raucous board games and sat on the kitchen counter and talked late at night, and yelled across the space that so and so’s tea water was ready.
When our college daughter prepared to return to her east coast city and her summer internships, I asked her how it all had felt. Her answer, in the form of a non-answer, gave me what I was looking for: “I don’t really know. It was just nice to be home.”
