Bless this home

you don’t have to own a place to feel a strong connection to it.

A framed, cross-stitched poem my Gran made adorned the wall in our home when I was growing up. It read:

“Bless this house oh Lord we pray
Make it safe by night and day
Bless each corner brick and rafter
Keep it filled with joy and laughter”

I memorized it early on in my childhood and incorporated it in our nightly devotional. After sharing some spiritual readings, together my family and I prayed at the end of each day. My brother went first, then me, then Mom, then Dad.

I lived in that house with my family for 18 years. Mom and Dad bought the lot and built it before I was born. It started as one of just a few houses on a tree-filled street. As I grew up it became a massive subdivision, a golfer’s delight. A safe place to sneak out of as a teenager. I’ve got no love nor defense for subdivisions, but our house had woods in the front and backyard and a wild blackberry patch by the road. My brother and I ran around as much as we could. We had hideouts and played with pets. Dad paid us 2 cents for every pinecone we collected and dumped in the fire pile. My brother destroyed the front porch skateboarding with his friends. The window in my bedroom opened up onto the flat roof above the kitchen. Here my friends and I would sit and gaze at the backyard forest and the sky above.

(My bedroom was around the back.)

Ultimately I loved growing up here. I wish everyone could have grown up like I did. I deserved it no more nor less than any other child in South Carolina. I’m glad I thought to bless it.

Tonight those cross-stitched lines came to me again as I browse quotes about home. Home has been on my mind since earlier this month when our landlords informed us that they were selling our beloved apartment where we’ve lived for the last six years.

Since then we (my partner mostly) have been frantically searching for a new place to live, and I’ve been trying to spend as much time as possible on the rooftop. In the last three weeks of house hunting I have realized we were paying pretty cheap rent compared to most places and also that I loved that stupid rooftop more than I ever knew. But also, people have bigger problems than losing a sundrenched terrace in the heart of the city. Forgive me, readers if this comes across as the privileged woman’s lament.

What does it mean to have a home?

For years I wrote a column in the Newcastle Herald called Homes of the Hunter and anyone who knew me knew that this gig stressed me out. Every week, I had to find some kind person with a house not on the market and beg them to let me inside where I would interview them and try to get some pretty photos too. Kind people helped me out with that column, from taking photos to giving me insight into their sanctuaries. I often felt like a fraud when I wrote it; architectural, real estate, stylistic, interior designer lady I am not.

The landlords of our current place offered to sell the apartment to us before they put on the market and some people really encouraged it. If it’s not having a kid, owning property symbolizes a massive step through the gates of adulthood. It’s where responsible, civilized people go to become more rich and discuss interest rates.

Why am I hesitant and even blasé towards it? It is maybe because I am holding out to buy land near my folks in America where it is half the price of land in Newcastle? Perhaps also I question the notion of owning property, though I don’t judge those who do. I regularly hear the phrase “this is stolen land.” If that’s true, what does it mean if one decides to buy in?

I have conflicting feelings about owning land, but what my Homes of the Hunter column taught me and this rapid evacuation from my current place reminds me is that you don’t have to own a place to feel a strong connection to it. I don’t really know much about splash backs and cornices, but when an elderly man sent me a handwritten note explaining the home he and his (now passed wife) meticulously renovated in Speers Point, and when I interviewed him and also his beaming granddaughter, I got it. When I interviewed a nontraditional collective who lived communally in a sprawling lot full of weird and wonderful shelters, their genuine love and connection to their place felt palpable. They may not have been there for generations, but they had roots! Humans created the concept of home, but it’s not always easy to explain. It’s hard to place, but we all want to go.

I don’t feel too many pangs about leaving our one bedroom apartment. It served its purpose, and I have enjoyed watching situations and people at the bus stop below. I have managed to keep most of our plants alive. It’s the rooftop I am mourning. It’s not like losing a pet or a relationship ending, it’s just a bittersweet marble rolling around in my head. I had a place in the sun, near the sky, that was, more often than not, mine all mine! I had a piece of paradise in the clouds. I did yoga at midday and drank wine at sunset. I had heart-to-hearts with friends and drunken dances with strangers who arrived late to a party, brought by a friend of a friend. We had live music on that rooftop!

I was Freddie Mercury on that rooftop.

I was Dolly Parton too.

I looked people in the eye over starry nights. I drank coffee with colleagues in the mornings. I took thousands of photos. I modeled for my friend’s awesome fashion company, The Colour Bug.

thecolourbug

A post shared by @thecolourbug

I came up to get away from everything during Covid, waiting to see planes and wondering when I could go home again. I attempted to partake in the building’s community gardening group. We harvested fresh herbs for dinner. I felt infinite there. I am loyal to the soil, I want to be a patchouli-wearing mountain mama, a salt-of-the-earth, gardening gal but that rooftop said “baby girl you don’t always have to be down to earth.” The rooftop showed me the sky was the fucking limit.

Now I see that I took it for granted. I should have gone up and blessed it every night, thanked the heavens for the chance to live like a queen for as long as I did. I should have worshipped it more.

In another Substack let’s examine culture, what it means to be home, to know a place, to belong. I’m so far away from my family, where we all once prayed under the same suburban roof.

Amazingly, we’ve already found a new place to live. We started moving in yesterday and all my friends agree it’s just as beautiful as the rooftop if not more so. “It’s even better than your last place!” But my friend Jen understood when I told her I was sad despite the good news.

”You bleed into the corners of where you call home,” she said.

Friday morning last week I woke up at 5:30 am. I hadn’t set an alarm. I stumbled out of bed, knowing instantly what I had to do. I have seen only one other rooftop sunrise in our six years here. It was when I went up to let go of hope for a job I desperately wanted at a museum in Mississippi. I hadn’t heard back about the interview, and I felt anxious that morning, tied between where I was and where I had potential to be.

Last Friday I again hurried to the rooftop, not knowing how many more chances I had to go. I began my salutations. I breathed deeply. I stretched. I took videos and photos, of course I did. That Saturday night we had a party, one I’d planned before we knew we had to go. The afternoon of the party I looked out at the Pacific ocean from my rooftop, thinking about space and time. During Covid I would call my Gran every Saturday morning until she passed away unexpectedly in October 2020. I remember one conversation when she told me why she loved Dolly Parton.

“She never forgot where she came from.”

Home is not just where you are, it’s where you’ve been. I am grateful for these spaces above me, below me and within me. It is nice to have a moment to say goodbye.

Thanks for reading and grieving with me.

“Home is where one starts from.” T.S. Eliot

”Home is what you take with you, not what you leave behind.” - N.K. Jemisin

”You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it’s alright.” - Maya Angelou