Create with Kim!

The weather forecast during the TV6 late news showed storms in the Dakotas and Minnesota wrecking havoc and downing power lines. I detest ice, wind and the cold of winter. This winter weather front, surely headed in our direction, was a stark contrast to our almost 40-degree night. So, I decided to take advantage of the oddness of this balmy evening in late November. I pulled on a hooded sweatshirt, added a top layer of rain gear, and headed out. The pavement was wet but the air so warm for November it did not even feel cold. On my way back home, a man was even out in shirtsleeves watching his dog “go”. He was eyeing his roof and front yard. I waved a hello and commented on the weather.

That is when it struck me; I had been looking at the houses in South Marquette. From old Victorians with dark wooded moldings and beveled glass windows to small tiny homes with unique structure, my longings were for a space all me. Safe. Artisitic. One where I could create a haven, artful and light, uniquely odd and Kim. A place I could retreat from the world. As I approach mid-age, I seem to be loosing my oomph, my fight. I do not want to wonder where I might make my home next. It wasn’t just the break-up of a twenty-year marriage that left me in this protective mode.

Flashback, age five or six, headed to Grandma and Grandpa’s house for a Sunday visit. My nose pressed against the glass, eyeing the blur of homes and backyards as we flew down the highway to East Detroit. My head counting off how many tree-forts I could hide in and how far they were from my own backyard.

I was looking for escape, already. Even though at that time, I had a relatively good young childhood, something about being adopted left me wondering when I might need a home. As I grew older and my home more abusive, it was immediate. Where could I find a safe dry place for the night if wild-happenings and living room-grumbles had me jumping fearfully out the bedroom window?

The longest I lived in one place was as homeowners with my ex-husband and children.  A small, modest home in the Upper Peninsula outside of Gwinn, near the township water tower and the lighted cross that shone down on residents during the holidays and harsh winter storms. I lived there eight years and the view from my kitchen table had become part of my soul. When the marriage broke up, I knew I could not afford to keep the house.

It was somewhere during that eight years that I had ceased looking for the next safe haven. I had found home. Built home. Created home. Lived at Home.

Now, I am learning to trust or trying to. I have a new partner and I moved into his home. I have noticed I am back to that same drive-time pastime of my childhood, eyeing up the next possible retreat. I tell myself that the life lesson is to make home wherever I go. That it is spiritual in nature and takes a grand trust in a power larger than myself. I know part of me is sheltering my soul, distancing myself, keeping options open.

I question how many years it took for my old house to become home. What allowed me to trust and settle into the land? When did my nighttime dreams begin to create daytime landscapes that transferred into the lay of a garden bed and the artwork on the walls? How did I ever feel safe and how can I foster that shift here, now, where I live.

When I first moved to the Upper Peninsula in 1993, I was a college student at Northern Michigan University. I recall that my writing suffered and my dreams would not come. I questioned a Native Elder on how to help my dreams return. He counseled that I was disconnected to the land that had been mine since birth.  Being in a new land I needed to connect-go for walks and hikes. It would be the land that would take me home.

It takes a season or two of watching the sun rise and set, looking at the stars while standing in the garden, and taking note of the aroma rising from the soil after a rain. In this case, it is going to take many evenings, the passage of the sun across the horizon, and the drift of dreams to meld and dance with my new partner who is sleeping next to me. I know he and I are still having shifting dreams where we are sorting, healing, our individuals pasts.

Last night, as I drifted off, I uttered, ” I am glad you are here.”

“I am glad you are here, too,” was his reply.

Previously Published within Inspired Times–Becoming Home-Summer, 2006