The Shifting Shape of Home

In the past few weeks, I've been in all three of the places that have been "home" to me for long periods of time: the rural rolling hills of central New York State; the mountains and valleys of Vermont; and, of course, the city streets of Montreal. This past weekend was the first time since we sold our house that we've made a real trip back to visit friends and family in Vermont and New Hampshire, and we needed to wait that long, I think, to settle in and establish Montreal as our new emotional, as well as physical, home. It felt unambiguously good to be back, and wonderful to see our friends, and just as good to come back here. That tells me we stayed away long enough and have actually made the transition, and can now come and go if we want to, without risking those tugs and long periods of adjustment I used to feel when we were living in both places. My connection to Vermont exists now as a considerable period of time - most of my adult life, really - and as a series of connections to people, work, institutions and organizations, many of which we touched during this past weekend. We went to a party with work colleagues that was held at the gallery and art center where I served on the board and education committee for many years, now grown into a thriving institution for the entire region with a vibrant educational program for kids and adults. We stayed with our friends B. and J. from our former church who had just come from the diocesan convention with Bishop Gene Robinson (+Gene made our friend J. his first Canon for Lay Leadership at that convention, and also stunned the delegates with his announcement that he will retire in two years.) On Sunday, we went to church with them to hear my former choirmates sing the Mozart Requiem, and talk and hug many, many people at the coffee hour afterwards. We had lunch with my sister-in-law, and dinner with close friends we've known since the early 1980s. And then, the next morning...we left, feeling loved, and came home to Montreal, and it was fine.

Central New York, where I went alone this time to visit my father, has exerted a different pull on me through my entire life - in some ways more than Vermont, because it's the landscape that's imprinted on my mind and heart. I felt good to be back there, as I always do, but sad to see how depressed the economy is; every time I go it feels like there are more barns fallen in, more abandoned or rundown houses, more empty storefronts in the downtowns. I feel angry about what's happened to family farming, and about the way this beautiful part of the country has been neglected, and sometimes exploited, by the government for decades, and understand at least some of what makes the inhabitants feel forgotten and hopeless about the future. Even though I haven't lived there for 35 years, I care about it in the same deep-down way that immigrants care about their native countries. We're inextricably tied, in a way I never felt about Vermont, but didn't realize with quite such clarity as I do now. I'm tied to the land of central New York; my ancestors are buried there, most of my family still lives there, and it's the culture and place that formed me: the source of my history and unique beginning of my own individual story.

This time my cousin and I sat down and talked about the family genealogy. She had asked some questions that I'd looked up in the notebooks I have from our great-aunt, and I brought a few things down for her and her daughter. We made plans to go together, this spring, to the old cemeteries mentioned in the family histories this great-aunt wrote for us, and find the graves of our ancestors. my cousin told me that one of the family barns is still standing, in Beaver Meadow, and that there's a stone in the foundation carved with the family name and date - I would love to see that. I have a photograph of that barn, I think, with our great-grandfather standing in front of it. There's a picture, somewhere, of this cousin and me as very little girls, with our mothers and grandmother and great aunts at a picnic on that land before our grandmother sold it, but as B. and I talked and looked at each other across the dining room table, we realized that now there's no one left to ask; from now on, the passing-on of this history is up to us.

J. and I visited Mont-Royal Cemetery recently, too, one of the two lovely old cemeteries on the "mountain" here in the city (the other is French and Catholic.) It's full of the grave markers and mausoleums of the rich and famous Protestant movers-and-shakers, and I enjoyed wandering around reading the names on the stones under the old trees. But I also felt very removed and very much a visitor; these are not my roots, and it's not my history. I'm sure that Montreal will become, like Vermont, a chapter in my life; I've already been changed by it and I'm already grateful to it. But for the first time, I begin to feel and understand that desire of my father- and mother-in-law to have us take their ashes back to the Middle East. Maybe in life, we can never really go "back home" again, once you've left and lived elsewhere, but how strange is the pull of those roots, how strongly they continue to hold in the earth.

Comments

[Uma]

Beautiful post Beth, makes so much sense to me. With our son entering college next year we have been wondering if we should move out of Chennai which I consider is my home by right. I was born here, grew up in Chennai, moved away for a decade after marriage but came back to Chennai to be with parents and others. It's time to grow roots elsewhere, build a home probably in the beautiful and hospitable state of Gujarat or Rajasthan :)

[Lorianne]

Lovely, both the post & the photo illustrating it.

[Natalie]

Yes, Beth, wonderfuly expressed feelings about a deep subject - 'home'. Coincidentally, I've just written a post about my father. But, unlike you, I have never been able to identify my roots and I wish I knew what that feels like. I don't mean necessarily genealogically but in a more earthy connection with place, with land. Could one invent roots?

[margaret]

A beautiful exploration of the homing instinct.
We saw your friends B. & J. on Saturday...it was a fantastic convention and the Bishop's closing announcement was a surprise but all who love him respect and accept the decision as a good and healthy one.
We are of course very pleased about the amazing J. becoming canon for Lay Leadership. She & I will be GC deputies again. It feels odd knowing that at GC 2012 we will be seeking and voting consent to our *next* bishop.
As we parted Saturday afternoon, I asked B. what was happening at their church the next day. He mentioned the Mozart Requiem and I confessed to a most un-Christian envy. How lovely that you were there to hear it! Their music program is simply splendid.

[zuleme]

Hi Beth,
I have long long roots on Cape Cod and the family tree goes back to the Mayflower. And I feel conflicted about the place whenever I go there because it is hugely overbuilt and overpopulated with shopping malls and chain stores and McMansions overpowering the traditional Cape houses and small towns I love. We still own great grandmother's house and have just made plans to try to pass it on to someone in the family who is capable of restoring it. One great uncle has work in the Sandwich Glass Museum and my grandmother helped to start it. The historical society has a whole file on my eccentric family and has just published a collection of my great grandmother's postcard collection of the Cape.
NY State is gorgeous and I feel sad too when we drive through there, seeing how poor the economy is.
Roots are roots, on the Cape we say you have sand in your shoes if you're a native.

[Marja-Leena]

Wonderful post, Beth, that touches on so many of my own feelings of home and roots. As immigrants, those roots go back to Europe - even though we were children when taken to Canada, there is a certain pull back, at least to visit which is not often enough. We both grew up in Winnipeg, so it was the home of our youth, but left after graduation and marriage, eventually staying here in one neighbourhood in the Vancouver area. We both moved so much as children in Winnipeg, that we've done the opposite and stayed here for most of our adult life now. As we look ahead to the last phase of our life, we're hoping health and wealth will allow us to stay here, even if it means to move into a smaller place, for we feel this is home where our roots are deep.

We hope you and J will eventually feel those same deep roots growing for your new home in Montreal, you certainly have started in that direction. It seems to me that it is harder to emigrate when you are an adult than as a child, when I think of my parents, especially my mother who was always homesick for the old country.

[Marie]

Une nouvelle racine qui pousse timidement, dans un nouveau terreau d'amitié, "home" là où le coeur peut s'épanouir.

[Jean]

This is so vivid. Attachment to a physical home is also a container for such unassuagable longings for a metaphysical home, I think, that these are hard waters to navigate. Sounds like you are steering a steady course.

[john]

thanks for this post Beth.Your comment about your in-laws ashes going back to the Middle East made me think of our family.A few years ago when my mom died she had said she wanted her ashes buried in the family plot in Germany.My Dad,one of my daughters,myself and a nephew were at the grave side in a small town in northern Germany after for a short burial ceremony.i understood enough German to recognize "I lift up my eyes to the hills" Last November I was back there to visit my mom.My cousin and I came onto a church service by the cemetary honouring Germany's war dead.I stayed for the laying of wreathes after the service and saw the names of the dead.Hundreds for a town that was so small.The family plot has grandma and grandpa on the headstone as well as my mother and two of her sisters.Also there is my uncle with one word next to his which squirts icewater into my veins every time I see it.Stalingrad.Maybe that place felt like a home in a "deep down way" as you say and their rememberance was also mine and that would explain why when the wreathes were lowered on so many names it made my eyes sting