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to Have my Own Home: an imaginary tale

Lately, I feel homesick—but I’m in the home I’ve lived in since my birth. Well, maybe not birth, but since my parents brought me home from the hospital.

This homesickness is moreso related to the home that I’ve created for my little love, my big love, and myself inside of my mind.

First, let me tell you—my early years in THIS home was brilliant. We have a home video (somewhere) of Thanksgiving, 1993. I was 3, closing in on 4, years old. My sister Stephanie was 15, my brother Ricky was 12, and my brother Michiel was 6. 

The camera fumbled between hands and between moments both perfect and imperfect. 

Ricky had the camera as an 110 pound Steph asked if she looked fat. As Mikey hollered at my mother, sitting in front of our 4 foot tall stereo, “Beethoven! Beethoven! Beethoven!”. As Mikey tried to dance with me and I exclaimed “No!” as I tried to dance only with my older sister who I admired so much.

Stephanie had the camera as she zoomed in on my mother beaming with a cigarette in her hand. As Ricky tossed a football around in the street in front of our house. As I sat sleepily at the table poking around at the food left on my plate from a Thanksgiving dinner that I had to be woken up to enjoy. As my father lay on the sofa under an afghan blanket and proclaimed “now we must not hesitate. Now we must vegitate!”

Today, we never play music anymore. Mom does not smoke nor beam as much as she sweats thanks to “those damn hot flashes.” I still would rather dance with my sister than Mikey but I don’t admire her so much anymore now that we are equals. My father doesn’t sleep on the sofa anymore and neither do we have blankets in the living room anymore. Stephanie doesn’t ask if she looks fat but rather asks if she looks like she gained weight. Ricky just might actually be out front throwing a football, but he is no longer with a friend—he is with his 6 year old son. And me? I am still sitting grudgingly at the table, not from literal weariness but from the weariness of celebrating a facade about the way our country was started.

This house has gotten old and, remarkably, the thing I miss most is the music playing. Perhaps our youth would have been maintained had not an impatience for sound permeated these walls.

And so here I am longing for a place I see myself 5 years from now. Dancing as the radio…or i-pod speaker…or whatever…blasts out music while I am teaching my 5 year old son how to bake. We are covered in flour and cake batter, laughing. Perhaps I am pregnant with my second and last child…a sibling for my little darling and another sunshine to love.

My big love would enter the house, home from his day at work, and wrap his arms around me from behind and we would sway together, enjoying music filling OUR walls and we would give each other a quick peck.

Our sun might say “ew” or it may be common enough that he ignores it. Regardless, daddy will join in the cooking, whipping up one of his deliciously spiced dishes, the smells filling our small home. And we would sit down for dinner together, and converse, just because. Not to celebrate anything but US.

And that is what I’m homesick for. Something I haven’t even tasted yet.