Despite all the headaches, strained muscles and overall stress that moving from one place to another entails, it is a strange mixture of happiness and heartache that lingers when the boxes are unpacked and the change of address forms are complete. Moving is a bittersweet endeavor and one that forces me to revisit the concept of home.

I’ve always had love-hate affairs with my homes. Even as a child, there was no place where I felt safer, and simultaneously no place I would rather not be. I ran away (really just down the block) for the first time when I was 7.

But I wasn’t one of those kids whose parents moved around all of the time. My mother’s family moved quite often when she was a child, and she consequently decided to move as little as possible. The house my parents brought me home to from the hospital when I was one day old is the same house in which my parents live today. The basement door is marked full of the periodic measurements of me and my brother, various childhood friends, and a few dogs. The U2 posters on my bedroom walls are still there from high school. My home was immensely stable, and yet I couldn’t help but reject it.

I always wanted to break out of that house and wander the globe. When I was 16, my parents let me go to Japan for a summer. At 18, I packed my bags and never lived in that house again. I moved all over, sometimes changing addresses every few months. Of course, moving is easy when you can fit all your belongings in your car. I made numerous homes for myself, only to pick up and leave when the mood arose again. Signing a yearly lease was a big deal.

But enough about freedom, because at the same time, I always needed to create a sense of home, even if only for three months. My urge to put roots down went deep, and in college when my friends were burning their paychecks on CDs, I shopped at Pottery Barn. I started collecting homey “things” like silverware, wine glasses, and lamps. Balancing my conflicting needs to be safe and be free, I made a point of buying only things that could be moved, and when I arrived at my next destination and unpacked the boxes, it was like Christmas as I lovingly unwrapped all the presents I would have picked for myself. Voilá - instant home.

After packing and repacking, I found myself back at the first place I called home after leaving my parents - Western North Carolina. Putting roots down became a symbolic act for me as I truly began to call this place home. I remember buying rhododendrons to plant in my yard and thinking “Well, I won’t be able to pack up and move these.” My dad gave me plants to start in my garden and my mother, knowing my penchant for moving, asked bluntly, “And who will be there to eat your asparagus?”

The more I planted the more I began to think of myself as home. I collected rocks and made flowerbeds. I terraced a hillside and made a vegetable garden. I hauled buckets of composted horse manure. I planted roses and daylilies, tulips and azaleas. I buried a baby bunny captured by my dog. I decorated Christmas trees, undecorated them, and set them to grow in the yard. I gathered more and more that couldn’t be moved, which led to great heartache when I eventually did.

A girlfriend recently suggested that I could go back and dig up my flowers if I miss them so much, but that plan somehow misses the point. I like the thought of a flower’s roots digging deeper and ivy spreading outward even though I’m no longer there with it. Like memories, they’re attached to the place.

Moving has forced me to re-evaluate my concept of home and what it is that makes my home my home. After not-so-long-ago being able to pick up and go at the drop of a hat, I had to wonder just how I came to have so much stuff. When cleaning out the closets, I had to decide what goes to the thrift store and what goes with me. When I go through my daughter’s outgrown clothes, it’s always a struggle to pick just one or two favorite dresses, a sweater or coat that will be kept for memory’s sake. Which ones of the 10 pieces of her artwork from any given day go in the scrapbook, which in the trash? While it initially seems that the making of a home is intrinsically materialistic - my table, my couch, my bed - it really is the sentimental pieces that matter. How do you let go of the cracked coffee mug that special so-and-so gave you? Boxes of letters from old friends? Rocks and shells and little beads each with a special memory?

Then the love-hate feelings return. I get angry with myself for being so attached to things, even if they are photographs. Maybe I should origami my photographs and letters and burn them with my other sentimental possessions for some more permanent home in the after-life. This last move was the first time I ever rented a U-haul, and I miss being able to fit my things in my car.

And what I think I really miss is the sense of stability that I had from my parents’ home. The knowing that the marks that we put on the basement door are still there. The knowing that the blackberries come up here and the flaming azaleas bloom here. The knowing that no matter how far away I go, there is a place where I am welcome and loved.

And so, I end up moving a lot of stuff with enormous sentimental and little monetary value and placing this and that around to create yet another home. I dig more holes and plant more flowers. I look at pictures on the wall and think about the other walls on which those pictures have hung. I wait for more memories to come.

(Esther Godfrey teaches English at WCU. She can be reached at egodfrey@wcu.edu)

 

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