For months, on my year long journey away, I have been
examining a question: who am I? What is my identity? I finally figured it out
on this Easter Day, 2014 in St. Andrews.
I am homemade.
You see most homes that I know of are held together by a
structure of comfort and dysfunction, love and passion, obsessions over what
your home and its members have or even lack- when listening, in everyday tasks,
in understanding the individuals in the home… there is no mold for a “normal”
home, each one is crazy in its own right. None the less, a home is a warm and
compassionate sanctuary, its where one can be their most organic self, enjoy
relaxing solitude, or the easy, unawkward silence of another’s presence. It is
a dungeon where one can take guilty pleasure in sulking in the solitude of
loneliness. It is a back ally bursting with secrets, thoughts, and words
written in the night. With those unspoken and spoken truths it is full of a
form of undying faith. It is a place where you cry until one day you finally
laugh again, or, better yet, where you laugh until you cry. It is an outdoor
sitting, delving into your deepest thoughts where the sun, rain and wind
weather your exterior. It is working and reading by the fire smelling expired
life become rich smoke, or maybe even resting in front of the fire with family
on a holiday not quite realizing that past life is turning into a vast radiance
of color. Overtime, home is influenced by who has tracked in and out, especially
if there was a doormat. It becomes one with the places you and the members of
the household have gone or didn’t go, the opportunities you each had or, even
better, the ones you made. It is a result of the hands that have worked both in
it, and on it, as well as the risks taken for those in the home. The character
of the household is determined by adventures had, undeserved privileges given, dreams
dreamt, but even more the dreams chased. Home is the picture house where you
enjoy an easy night of classic films and indulge in foods that comfort the
soul. At any given time a home is only as good as the people in it. I hope those
people are loyal because I am those people- loved by them, supported by them,
challenged by them, hated by them, I have learned from them, and have been built
by each one of their crazy exteriors and dysfunctional interiors. I am
homemade.
