Homeless

I’m not literally homeless. I have a roof over my head and for that I am truly grateful. I am homeless nonetheless. Let me explain.

I was watching the new season of Chef’s Table. Two of the chefs featured were southern chefs. Just like many of the previous chefs, these chefs had to return to their roots in order to find their voice in cooking. They spoke of grandma’s cooking and home, their deep roots in southern culture with all its complications. Hearing their stories brought up a lot of emotion in me. Bottom line is that I don’t have those roots to depend on and that’s what I mean by feeling homeless.

I’ve been homeless my whole life. The only “home” I ever felt I had was my grandparent’s home in Kansas and they sold it all to move to Texas when I was 16 or so. I haven’t had a home since.

My family home was in Amarillo, Texas, but it wasn’t a home. It wasn’t a place of comfort or a safe haven. It was scary and I didn’t feel emotionally safe. We weren’t a family unit. We were five people treading water, looking for dry land that wasn’t there.

Caldwell, Kansas was my safe haven. My brother, sister, and I spent a lot of time there, because my mother was in and out of the mental hospital and my dad couldn’t handle taking care of us and her at the same time. We were a burden to them, but at least we had a place to go.

It may not have been the warmest of environments, but we were taken care of while we were there. My grandmother was cold and demanding and even though there were kids in the neighborhood, she tended to keep us in the house most of the time. My brother and sister didn’t like it, but I didn’t mind. I liked spending time with my grandparents.

I would hang out with my grandpa at his farm supply store or in the garden and I would help my grandmother cook and clean house. I learned a lot about taking care of a home from her. She was a bit obsessive with cleanliness, which could explain my need to have a neat, orderly house. She wasn’t the greatest cook, but we were always well fed and I learned how to cook from her. My grandmother didn’t particularly enjoy taking care of a home and family, but she thought it was her duty and she did the best job she could and she taught me everything I know.

They had a pretty big garden in the back yard, where they grew a lot of their produce. My grandpa was the gardener. He’d come home from the store, eat his dinner, then go out back and putter around in the garden. His lawns were immaculate and his gardens were always well cared for. To this day, the smell of tomato plants, marigolds, and petunias as well as the call of the mourning dove and watching birds always takes me back to that small window of happiness in my childhood.

My grandmother was the cook. I remember sitting out on the porch with her, snapping beans into a colander and even though I don’t like beets, I loved the smell of beet greens cooking in the kitchen. We always had a wide variety of vegetables with our meat and potato meals and I was never too picky about eating vegetables. (Except beets and that came from being served canned beets at school and having the juice run all over all of my food. I’m going to suck it up one of these days and try them again. I bet I’ll like them.) It’s not like I want to go live in Kansas again, but I really want to recapture that feeling of home.

After my mom died, I felt it was my responsibility to hold my family together. Cooking and feeding people was part of that, but I wasn’t a very good cook. I desperately wanted to give my nieces and nephews that sense of grandma and home that I felt they were going to miss out on, so I moved into our grandmother’s childhood home in Oklahoma. It had history. It had roots. Our ancestors are buried there. But it didn’t work out the way I wanted. I found out that Grove, Oklahoma is a meth-infested, shit-hole and after I moved away, someone burned down the house and the barn, so now there’s no history left to go back to, which seems to be par for the course with my family.

Now, I’m living with my sister in a place that feels like home to her, but not really to me. I know a lot of people, but I don’t have any friends. One niece is here, but the rest of our small family is in Omaha. We are not one of those families that get together for the holidays and we don’t even talk that often. I think it’s because of that lack of home. We have no roots to return to. We’re still treading water.

They say that “Home is where the heart is,” but I think it’s more than that. Home is your safe haven, where you loved for who you are. Unconditionally. But home is also a place. It has history. It’s where you have roots and where your ancestors lived.

I feel so disconnected. How do I find my home? I don’t think I can make a home just anywhere. For me, it’s a feeling and a sense of belonging to a place. I never felt I belonged with my birth family. I never felt like I belonged in Omaha. I don’t feel like I belong here in Colorado. I’ll have to start looking in the only place that is really home to each of us: with myself. As Brené Brown says,

The truth is: Belonging starts with self-acceptance. Your level of belonging, in fact, can never be greater than your level of self-acceptance, because believing that you’re enough is what gives you the courage to be authentic, vulnerable and imperfect.

I’ll start with my body, my first and only real home. I haven’t treated my body very well over the years and it could use some TLC. I’ll start with cooking. I love to cook and I was actually getting good at it, but then I started having all the intolerance issue, so now I have lots of dietary restrictions, including being a vegetarian. Now, I’ll have to learn to cook all over again. And even though I don’t have the space to build a garden, I can make do with the space I have and grow as much of my own food as I can. Growing food has always made me happy.

I’ve also let my muscles go to pot over the last several years. I used to be so strong…sigh. Now, it’s like an old fixer-upper; it’s looks neglected, things are sagging, and it needs a little love and attention. One of my great loves is hiking big mountains and my body is no condition to do that right now. It’s time to fix that. It’ll be hiking season soon.

I have a lot of work to do on me and the time to do it is now. I’ve only got 30 or so years left and I don’t want to waste another second. One day soon, I’ll find my where I belong in the physical world, a piece of land on which to feel safe and cared for. In the meantime, I’ll work on finding home within myself.