Thoughts About Home by Deborah

In Vermont

I have a confession to make, a true confession, one straight from the heart, and not to belabor the point, one from the very depths of my soul.

I miss my dog. Here, in the midst of words and hills, granite waterfalls and 1700’s architecture, and an occasional cool morning, I miss my animal back home in Kentucky where the air stands still this time of year and even the Whippoorwills are breathless until after sunset.

I miss my dog. Her name is Missouri, so named for my husband’s great grandmother, Laura Missouri, called Souri for short.

I miss the nearness of my dog, when if it thunders, how she presses her side against my leg as I type away at my desk, how she stands near with her floppy ears and golden eyes, her long legs and short Lab’s coat, her hound dog scent and her willfulness. She dictates our walks, wrapping the leash about her mouth like a muzzle, wagging her head from side to side if I dare to stop too soon.

In Waitsfield, where my husband and I stop for lunch beneath old locust trees, a nearby table’s humans stand to leave for the bathroom with the reassurance that, “Stay. We will be back. Stay.”

The dog whimpers and watches every move of all who are near until I speak and say, “They will be back soon.”

She loosens the grip of her leash and hunkers beneath our table, pressed close to my legs. I stroke her head and she stops crying.

She is brown and white with a black belly and deep, mournful eyes. I tell her I miss my Souri and she nods. We understand one another until her owners return and call her Latke and they ask my husband to take their picture. Then they leave with their dog who has their routine down so completely she does not hesitate to hop into the back seat and we are alone once more.

I miss my dog with her straight forward, no nonsense grip on reality. Back home in Kentucky, late in the day, when my husband is just home, the phones off and the wine poured, the music on and the French doors open, darkness will draw near, the gas lights will flicker on our walking court.

Then total strangers will pause on the sidewalk out front, just beyond the rhododendrons, to look in on our lives and I will know, deep within my soul, I will know, it will be those strangers who miss their dogs as our Souri chews on her evening treat of raw hide while we sip our wine. I will know it’s not us or the house they will see. It will be our dog at home with those who love her best.

And this will be what they remember, what they will recall when someone ventures, Kentucky? What did you see in Kentucky?

Author's Note: My dog Missouri died peacefully in the summer of 2009

Coming Home

Earlier this year, I published my book “Where the Heart Is – Essays on Home” as an eBook. This essay is another that I’ve written and is part of a new collection of essays on home that I’m gathering. Watch for the publication!

Many people have purchased “Where the Heart Is – Essays on Home.” I’ve received many wonderful comments. Thank you.

Please take a moment to go to the site where you purchased the book and rate it. I will be grateful if you recommend it to others.

"Where the Heart is" (Kindle Edition)

"Where the Heart Is" (EPUB Edition For Apple, Nook, & Adobe Editions)

_____

Last night the moon, the full round moon, shown in our bedroom window, bathing the sheets with
the softest light.  Such a balm.  I left the drapes open.  I wanted to sleep in the moonlight.

Now it is morning.  A bird chirps over and over again just outside the library window.  A fire hums to itself in the fireplace and the sky has changed each time I’ve glanced up and out the window, the early magentas fading to blue and rising into pale pink all in a moment’s glance. 

Most of the trees on the court have lost their leaves, exposing the elegant carriage of their bare branches.  I’m still waiting for the one fell swoop of the gingko’s leaves.  They are nearly there, nearly that brilliant yellow that precedes the sudden fall.  Gone, it will seem, in one swift moment.

I feel as if I’ve finally come home.  Louisville.  It was first my father’s hometown.  He was raised not far from where I live now.  These streets were the streets of his childhood.  He played tennis in Central Park and football for the old Male High.  The last time he and I walked this area, he told me about each of the families who’d lived in the houses on Floral Terrace and Park between Sixth and Seventh.  The fruit vendor, the Lutheran minister, the L&N engineer, the single ladies.  He showed me where he and his buddies had played football as children in the fading light of fall afternoons.  He pointed out his favorite house, the one on Ormsby, just the Sixth Street side of Ormsby Court.

My father raised us far from the city in a brand new house.  He wanted something better for us.  It was the post war dream of men who’d left home as boys and returned as people hungry for a new beginning.  He never talked about the war with me and it wasn’t until his wake that I heard stories of what he’d endured out there in the South Pacific- 18 years old and far, far from these gracious streets.

I am his daughter and I’ve come home now. A generation later.  One night, shortly after we moved in, I had to park on Sixth Street and walk down the court.  As I struggled with my purse and briefcase and a plastic bag of groceries, I looked up and walking toward me from the far end of the Court, silhouetted against the ginkgo tree, was a man whose features I couldn’t discern but whose gait and body build were identical to my father’s.

My earliest memory of him was his return from work.  He’d suddenly appear on the sidewalk up the block from where we lived at the time.  My mother would give me permission to run to him and he’d gather me up in his arms and lift me high off the ground.   I thought he was the strongest man in the world.

My father is buried beneath a ginkgo tree.  The Chinese claimed it as a sacred tree, one to be revered.  I can see a ginkgo from my window here in our library.  It’s just after eight now and the sky is clear, the colors of dawn dispersed.

I’ll sleep again tonight in the moonlight and rejoice, in the quiet grace of this house, this place where I so ineffably belong.

Home is a place where the past reaches for the present and casts us into the future.  Safely. Safely.

 

Thrown Flowers

Cool tonight. Fatigue is welcome for a change, not a feeling I have to struggle against. A warm bed offering the weight of covers; a cup of hot tea; our house filled with overnight guests; the energy is just right.

St. James Art Show began today. I told David when I am deeply tired as I am this evening, I try to recall the sweetest moments of the day...beginning this morning with our five-year-old grandson  calling to me from the top of the stairs, then appearing in the doorway of the room where I sat sipping my coffee. He wore one of his grandfather's white undershirts as a nightshirt. He was barefoot. His dark hair was tousled from sleep. I set my coffee cup aside and reached to hug him. We walked together to the kitchen for a mug of hot chocolate...

Our daughter who is seven months pregnant with her first child arriving in our front hall having walked the six city blocks from her home, vividly beautiful in that way women are in the last weeks of pregnancy...

Beholding a large canvas filled with rich color, painted the artist told me with glass so that the light shimmered against the surface; selecting a red coffee cup; donning ear rings made from blown bits of glass; discussing a bronze sculpture with its creator as he described the welds and how he chose the name, "Peace in Motion"...

Wind in the green leaves; our rescued cat's purr against my palm; the scent of freshly baked bread, a flickering candle melting down within a deep glass, casting rimmed reflections against the silky curves of an old french chair...

How the dog has settled her head on her front paws; the tossed flowers offered to me by a man cleaning out his garden; how I know, as I snuff the last candle and climb the stairs to sleep, I will carry these moments into my dreams.

 

What We Bring

I knew the moment I stepped into the house where we live now that it was the one. I turned to the right and saw a room banked by french doors with leaded glass fan lights; to the left was the dining room with its eight walls, burnished a deep historic orange. I figured there would be bedrooms, a kitchen, and baths somewhere but they were not the deciding factor. It was the spirit of those first rooms that drew me close and made me feel at home. All these years later I feel the same way.

On a recent Saturday night we joined friends for dinner in a most unlikely setting, a small apartment, a third floor walk-up in an old house on Brook Street.  The house's front yard is rimmed with chain-link. The fire-escape hangs from the front of the house. It is a part of the neighborhood that is not entirely settled.  My friend is living there at the moment using furniture left by previous tenants.  She cooked an elegant meal which we ate by candle light and after dinner, before dessert, we observed a custom older than the house. The men remained in the parlor while the ladies withdrew to another space.

In this case, my friend and I climbed out the large center window of the front room onto the fire-escape. It was late by then; the sky was growing dark, wisps of pink fluttered as the day passed into night.  A moon was up, there was a breeze and from our perch, we could see the wind in the tree tops. I listened as a car pulled up out front. A woman opened the trunk and lifted out several bags. Had she been to Target? The grocery? When she opened the back door on the passenger side, a small boy stumbled onto the sidewalk. I could tell from his posture that he had been sleeping.  She took his hand and the two of them walked toward home. He cried the tears of a small child whose sleep has been interrupted.  I felt for each of them.

Up there on the fire-escape, Old Louisville's tree line blended in and around her magnificent roofs, tapered chimneys with their chimney pots. My friend and I have shared meals in France where she used to live. She has known a life of quiet sophistication. Before we left, I told our small party that our friend has the rare ability to enchant any room she possesses.

Each of us leaves a space where we have slept and dreamed, loved and wondered, known sorrow and deep joy, each of us leaves that space changed forever.  If we are yet present, the view becomes exquisite.  It's what we bring to the room, to the house, that matters.

Beyond

My grandson wants to talk about heaven. He is five years old and curious about death. I have told him the story of his birth for I was there. I tell him how he cried and was taken to a glass crib where the nurses checked to make sure he was okay. How his dad and I walked with the nurses to the glass and watched as the nurses did their job and how when he cried, I consoled him and he recognized my voice and ceased crying until a nurse said," Mrs. Stewart, we want him to cry. He must clear his lungs."

I told his him Uncle Joey wept with joy when he entered the room where his sister's first born child had just been born. He and I talk about tears and how limited our bodies are in ways to express emotion. I say, "People cry for all sorts of reasons. They cry when they are sad; they cry when they are in physical pain, but they also cry when they are deeply, deeply happy.”

When the nurse handed her first born child to my daughter-in-law, she kissed him and said, "God must love me, for he has given me such a beautiful baby."

A large tree has fallen on St. James Court, the second so far this week. As we investigate the tree, my grandson dips under the canopy, now within his reach. He stares out at me through the leaves that are still vibrant and green. I call him from his lovely space and show him the seed pods which are most abundant in the top foliage.

He asks, "Amma, can one seed grow a whole tree?" I assure him that it can and does. He plucks a fist full of seedlings from this tree and flings them into the center of the court.

As he gathers stray branches and stacks them against the trunk of a living tree, a neighbor who has happened by says her youngest used to play with sticks like that.

She and I lament the fact that the trees have fallen because their roots had been severed when the new curbs were poured, several years ago. She says," Between the droughts and all this rain and wind, it is no wonder the trees have fallen."

My grandson and I walk on, toward the fountain where we pause and he says, " Amma, your spirit lives forever, right?" I assure him that it does. He wants to know how this can be and I hold his hand as we cross the street and step safely onto the walk. I let go then and tell him that when he is 100 years old, he might want to visit Heaven and I will be there to welcome him. I say," Amma will be there to hug you and give you a kiss."

Then we head to the playground of Central Park where he will climb and slide until it is time to leave.

Stillness

All is still in our courtyard here in the heart of the city. Tufts of tall grass no longer feather the breeze but stand mute, etched in ice and snow. Water in the fountain is frozen, leaves suspended in mid-swirl.

We've hung a wreath on the garden gate and strung vivid blue lights along the path leading to our door.  Last summer we had the door painted a deep red which signifies, we are told, that the Holy Spirit may dwell therein. Our door knocker is the head of a Lion, Aslan, of course. I found it years ago in a junk shop down on Market Street, long before that area became fashionable.

Enter the house and you'll find a tray for your boots along side the old wardrobe. It came from Normandy and was a gift from a friend who had spent part of her life in France. When the time came for her to downsize, the magical wardrobe made of wild cherry that glows in the late light of a winter's day, came our way.

We use its deep shelves for storage of vases and candlesticks, large platters, and pieces of cut glass handed down through David's family. Of late it is a place our five-year-old grandson stands before and reaches to open wide the double doors. This fourth generation of David Laurence Stewart stares up at these shelves and declares, "I need something for my Mom."

I ask, "What would you like to take her?" He remembers that her favorite color is blue and so I suggest the votive candle holders, the blue ones a departed friend gave me one snowy evening long, long ago.

Later today, I will sit with my 86 year old mother in the place she now calls home. We will have tea together. She will ask to be reminded of the day , whether or not we are going to the family farm, if she is packed for the journey. She will relish the feel of a warm cup in her hands and tell me how much she misses me when I do not come to see her.

I will help her into fresh clothes, brush her hair, hold the mirror while she applies her face powder and lipstick. Then, I will walk with her to the dining room where she will take her place at the dinner table and there I will say goodbye.

It is then, as I leave, in that brief moment of departure, that time, like the stillness in my courtyard, like the lights along the garden path, the deep richness of the wardrobe aglow in our front hall, the blue of my mother's eyes, the anticipation on my grandson's face, it is then, that time will seem fixed. Like a Renoir or a Matisse. It's not a sadness but a quiet joy. Something like love that deepens with the passage of each season. Something like Christmas with its angels in the fields among the startled shepherds, or the wise men on their camels following a distant star, bearing the weight of Herod's certain betrayal, or this new born king wrapped in rags laying in a manger with tidings of great joy swirling about him like snow in the desert.

All the Stars In the Sky

My grandson and I spend Thursdays together. We have since he was six weeks old. Over the past  four years we've had a chance to trade quite a few stories. I've learned what it is to see the world through the eyes of a child once more. He has learned about language from me. We've talked about opposites, about synonyms, about irony, the beauty of language, how to express what it is you feel exactly, simply. We've become experts at the game of "I love you more than....(all the stars in the sky, all the snow flakes there are, etc.)"

Today he made a special request. He wanted to see his great grandfather, David Laurence Stewart the First's House. Great Granddaddy has been gone for twenty years. I had no idea who lived in his house. But I said we would go. I said we'd take his trycycle and ride around the house.

The house sits on the corner of Edgehill Road and Walnut Place in the Highlands. I parked my car on the edge of the road in front of the Allison's house. Mr. Allison died earlier this year but I know that one of his sons will buy the house to keep it in the family and the family will continue to gather there for the holidays and other special occasions.

I pulled the trike out of the back of the station wagon and walked beside my grandson as he peddaled up the small incline of Walnut Place and turned around on the basketball pad that always doubled as a parking pad. I asked him which way he wanted to go next. He pointed back to Edgehill.

I stayed close as he made a sharp left down the hill onto Edgehill and then turned into the front drive of the house. What I didn't expect is that he would "park" his bike at the foot of the front stairs and say to the mail man who was on his way up to the mail box, " This is my great granddaddy's house." The mail man said "Really? What is his name?" To which my grandson said, "David Laurence Stewart." and the mail man responded, " Someone else lives here now."  and David IV shot back, "This is his house."

After the mailman left, we climbed the remaining steps to the front door and David asked if I would knock on the door because he wanted see inside. I told him I didn't know the people who lived here now and besides they might not be at home. He looked up at me with his solemn brown eyes and said, "They might be in the garage."

"Of course," I told myself. " Why didn't I think of that." I rang the doorbell. No response. Just as I turned away a car whipped into the drive and stopped abruptly to avoid hitting the trike. Then the garage door went open and the car pulled in. A woman and her young daughter emerged with a smile. I introduced myself and the woman said her parents had known the Stewarts and she was delighted to meet David and me. She and her daughter Isabelle took us on a full tour and it was lovely.

Later David the 4th said " Great Granddaddy's house is big. I never met a girl named Isabelle before."

Such a sweet and haunting way to end this year. His own father was just four when we had to explain that his grandmother had died in the upstairs bedroom. He asked us if we were joking and when we said we were not, he fell back in David's arms and wept.

Today, another four year old David Stewart stepped into that same bedroom with no sorrow, just the joy of curiosity and the wonder of his past, those who no doubt love him and surround him with those angels unaware.

The Continuum of Life

The scent of ripened fruit hung heavy in the air that night. David and I walked through the peach orchard under a full autumn moon. I don't remember why we found ourselves in the orchard so late. All I knew for sure that night was that I would give birth within the next twenty-four hours. We would be parents for the first time, I was sure of it.

 

All these years later I recall the moonlight, David's nearness, and the strong scent of peaches. David had come home from work to find me crying in our room. Instead of comforting me, he reached for his camera. I'd never been pregnant before and certainly birth would be a whole new passage for me.

 

Recently, I was in the room with a dear friend who learned she had a short time left to live. I knew before she did. A conference call had been arranged so that her two sons, one calling from Washington,

D.C., the other from Los Angeles, could tell her themselves. When the phone rang, and she answered, I could tell by her expression that it was her boys. I nodded, touched her leg and left the room.

 

When I returned, the phone call was over and she sat in her hospital bed, staring straight ahead. She spoke first. "There's nothing more the doctors can do for me," she said. "I won't get better."

 

She was not a praying sort of woman. But I am convinced prayer can take many forms. I was not the only other person in the room. Her sister was there as well as a dear friend. Each in our own way told her we loved her.

 

I miss my friend. She died on Derby Day while David and I were in Audubon Hospital as he recovered from heart surgery. I remember her calls to us, full of concern and best wishes. I remember the phone call early Sunday morning that told me of her death. I remember how the last times I saw her, she would take my face in both her hands and kiss my cheek in farewell always adding she loved me. It was unlike her to be so affectionate, so eye to eye deliberate in her pronouncement of love.

 

I look back now and wish I had been more patient, less afraid, had told her just as deliberately how much I loved her, how much I valued her friendship, how much I had learned from her and how much I had yet to learn. I didn't want her to leave. I wanted her to stay.

 

Now, she visits me in my dreams and we share a brief time of conversation. Her voice hovers over me in my dreams and I can't recall the setting or reason for her visit. But she is okay now. Of that much I am sure, just as I was so sure about pending birth of our child all those years ago in that moonlit peach orchard.

 

What I was to learn from that birth was that I would no longer fear my own death. As I gave birth, I understood that birthing was as natural as dying. It was all a part of the continuum of life. I want to live and I want those I love to live but when death intervenes, I have learned to accept it as a fact. That's what people do; they live and then they die. The hard part remains living each day with a keen sense of joy and celebration for the love that surrounds me.

 

Even though they tell us the recession is technically over, for many the hard times persist. I am not minimizing the difficulty of financial insecurity. All I am telling myself and anyone who will listen is that it must not eclipse the joy, the tenderness, the goodness of all we have that money cannot touch or save.

 

Home, in every language there's a word for it; it's that place in our hearts that makes each moment a room of its own, a prayer of its own, a space in time to reach for the miracles that we know will come.

 

Mid-summer Morning

The house we live in was built in 1891 on the same limestone that once supported the Southern Exposition. For those of you who may not know, the Southern Exposition (1883-1887) was a sort of mini-World's Fair that exhibited the latest in art, farm equipment and inventions. The building that housed this collection of wonders extended from Magnolia Avenue on the north to Hill Street on the South and from Fourth Street on the east to Sixth Street on the West.

 

When the building was disassembled in 1887, a man by the name of Slaughter bought the land and created what are now St. James, Belgravia and Fountain Courts. So, the limestone was recycled to sustain the houses of the courts and the roof slate was used to side a hospital and doctor's house built on Sixth Street in the 1890's and billed as the first hospital west of the Alleghenies dedicated exclusively to the treatment of women.

Today we call them Slate house and Junior Slate house. No longer a hospital and doctor's home, they now house an architect's office and condos.

 

Our house on Belgravia takes on a different slant of light depending on the season. It faces north so ours is the last side of the court to see snow and ice melt. Ours, too, is the last side to watch our Mountain Laurels spring into bloom or our Tulip Magnolia release her heavenly pink blossoms.

 

It is now mid-summer and cool enough to carry breakfast outside near the fountain in our small courtyard. What is it about the sound of running water that is such a comfort? I sip my hot coffee, listen to the mockingbird whose trill goes on and on from one song dipping into another, and relish the early morning. Last night I was awakened to the soft but persistent hoot of an owl in the magnolias.

 

I lay awake thinking about this house that I love, the timeless grace of it. The bed we sleep in was given to me by a childless couple in their nineties who were leaving their home of 47 years to move into assisted living. The bed had been a gift to the wife from a dear friend in Texas. It had been her friend's grandfather's bed. They gave me the bed with the promise that one day I would make of it a gift as well.

 

So, the night, the owl, the bed, the woman, all rest on the foundation stones of the building where Edison first displayed his 16 candle-powered light bulb. It is said in those days, families would gather before the Southern Exposition with dinner baskets and picnic on the grounds of what would later become Louisville's Olmsted designed Central Part. But long before Frederick Law Olmsted ever saw the land, these families sat transfixed waiting for dark when they would behold the dazzling display of Mr. Edison's single light bulb.

 

In the dark, I drift back to sleep waiting for morning in the arms of this old bed, held in the rooms of this old house, in mid-summer, lulled by the owl, to be awakened by the light with the bird whose song never seems to stop and whose variations are endless.

Sustenance

My husband, David, came very close to dying. My thin, athletic husband who had always been careful about his diet and exercise had chest pains while walking our dogs and called his doctor. One test led  quickly to another and revealed major blockage in his arteries. His cardiologist said, “It’s 100% genetic. There is nothing you could have done to prevent this.” Following a catheterization, David had a quadruple by-pass performed by Dr. Steven Etoch at  Louisville's Audubon Hospital. The photograph that accompanies this brief letter was taken by David’s brother, Bob, in CCU, less than two hours after surgery.

Audubon Hospital became our second home. We slept there. We took all of our meals there. We received guests there. Instead of walking them to their cars, I accompanied them to the elevators. From our windows we saw geese in flight, the distant cityscape against the early morning mist rising off the Ohio, the forest with a stream running through it that embraced the west side of the hospital, the side where we were kept, the cardiac wing. In the morning we could hear the bird calls filling the trees. Our room had windows I could actually tilt open for fresh, cool, sometimes rain drenched air.

 David was in CCU for less than 24 hours and once we were in a room where flowers were allowed, they came. The flowers did. They felt like a blessing. We became known as the room with the beautiful flowers.

 Ned Morris, our rector and Emily Schwartz, our assistant rector, stopped by with prayers and their presence. On Sunday afternoon, Ned brought us the Eucharist. Ned prayed with us before the catheterization, the night before the surgery, and throughout the entire ordeal. We are truly blessed to have him in our lives and to have Emily with her beauty and youth and deep spirit.

 Kate brought a single down comforter from home for me and I made my nest of a bed on the couch along one wall nearest David’s bed. She downloaded movies to her I-pod so that I could don ear-plugs and watch old movies while David slept. And because she is my daughter, she gathered a small library of reading material and made sure I had the most recent New Yorker.

 Our son, David, was the designated griller at his wife’s family Derby party and brought me a full plate of delicious picnic food for dinner later that night.

The morning of David’s surgery I looked up as David’s brother Bob slipped into our room. David was showering. I was packing up our things. It was five am. A few minutes later, our daughter Kate, opened the door and joined us. Before the morning was over, all who could would gather round a table in the snack area off the waiting room for cardiac surgery. David’s sister, Annie brought food for snacking. Kate, her husband Craig, our son David, David’s brother Dick and his wife Deborah, Bob. Ned, Emily, my sister Cynthia and my brother, Gerald. Later my brother, Thomas would join us. Each of these people lead very busy lives but they stopped what they were doing. If I had tried to arrange a dinner party to include them it would have been impossible, but without my asking anyone, each of them put their lives on hold and came to be near. For hours they talked, laughed and snacked together around that table.

Through it all, my phone was filled with emails of support, blessings, offers of food, love, encouragement. Then, like the angel at  Bethesda, a nurse appeared to say David had been removed from the heart-lung machine and the surgeon was closing him up. She escorted us to a small room near Cardiac Critical Care where Dr. Etoch would meet us.

David now walks without pain. He tires easily but each day he grows stronger and the pain has now gone. We were sustained the many prayers and kindnesses of our family and friends. Our lives are filled with gratitude.