As I’ve entered life past fifty, memories press me at every turn. You would think I’m on my way to becoming one of those pitiful senior citizens who gabs happlessly to any bystander, “When I was young that building used to be a school…” But it's where my brain seems geared as of late.
Is this just a natural consequence of losing my mom last year?
Granted, it was a closure of sorts in regards to childhood. The family home of seventy years was sold; Park Avenue is no longer my street.
When I drive past the house that gave structure to my existence for decades, I can’t even put the emotion into words. Essentially, “Was it real?” is what pulses through my heart and mind. Gazing at that house, I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge with the Ghost of Christmas Past, smiling in senility at old Fezziwig. When I come to, I have no better understanding than I do for a strange and unexplainable dream.
The settings which surrounded our years of growth are powerful to us because of the energy they housed, but in reality they are no more significant than the shell on the back of a crustacean, shed the moment it is outgrown. Pondering this, I realize that the house is a mere symbol for the dynamics that took place under its roof: the interactions, dialogues, hopes, dreams, toils; it is a mere representation of an era gone by.
Looking at it that way, I become cognizant of the fact that it is a phase of my life that I strive to reconcile and not the loss of a tangible thing.
But the seemingly futile meaning for that which was once all meaningful, causes me to question the ever fleeting present tense. What is meaningful, right here and right now? I know the answer involves the eternal: interactions, relationships, time spent- all of the things money can’t buy.
Home is where the heart is. The old adage is truer to me than ever before. Home is when, where, how, or why you share of yourself with another. In that sense, we metaphorically carry our homes on our backs, just like the snail. As we inch through this life, at work, in the grocery, helping a friend… we create a home any time we connect with another in the human race.
The paradox is that unlike the shell of a physical home which serves its purpose for a while and then is shed, these connections with others create a shelter for the heart that is perpetual; bonds of this nature are timeless and enable us to live in that space of life where no material thing can fit. They can not be aged, stolen, or torn down, the most priceless real estate of all.
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