Home is Good…and It’s Complicated

I live in a country that was built on an idea. That’s pretty incredible. But that idea was imperfectly implemented and has played out in devastating ways. Slavery and taking lands away from people already here are two of the biggest examples. And yet, I love this country because I love the promise of that democratic ideal and think it’s worth fighting for and making more perfect.

This country is imbued with contradictions. In the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson writes of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet, we have people mowed down by guns in the most horrific way unlike any other developed nation on the planet. Children in school, folks dancing, people listening to a concert denied their most fundamental right. And I also grew up in the home of a Hermiston farm boy who fished and hunted his whole life. He collected antique rifles. I ate rare venison tenderloin from animals he hunted, cleaned, and prepared–the best meat I’ve ever eaten in my life. He taught me how to shoot a bench rifle .22 and we discovered I was really good at it. Southeastern Ohio bench rifle competitions turned into my method of earning grocery money during my French graduate program.

I live in a region, town, home where people with names like Cayuse, Walla Walla, Umatilla, Nez Perce (even this name is French for “pierced nose”) lived here first. Driving by the Columbia River, I always feel like I’m home, but I know this flooded/dammed (damned?) version is not what was home prior to those constructions and plans. The Gorge means “the throat” in French–probably narrow areas of the river that we don’t see quite in the same way anymore, but the name continues. I consider the Pacific Northwest my home. My ancestors have lived here for generations. I’m proud of the drive and spirit and work ethic that moved them across oceans and continents to strive for something better. I am proud of the lives and loving and building of these people. And I also know that it is in a place that was someone else’s home first.

I live in a home that has had many lives and memories. It was built in 1911. There was a fire here we think some time in the 1940s. There’s a pulley system that was for coal that got shoveled into the basement and then carried up into what is now the kitchen. Bryan installed a second oven for me, his baker wife. In that process we saw so many layers of linoleum/vinyl. Bryan and Sara bought this house. They raised Mary in this house until she was eight and then Bryan continued to raise her here on his nights and weekends. Gil and Dot visited this home long before I ever knew their names. This home holds the memories of the first dinner Bryan ever cooked for me–chicken pesto pasta with pasta he made from scratch (that was kind of a big damn deal for this woman!) I met Mary for the first time in this house. We planted in the spring, grilled in the summer, carved pumpkins in the fall, and decorated for Christmas and rearranged furniture and painted and fed so many friends and loved ones. And this is the home where Bryan got sick. And this is the home where I was terrified of his falling. And this is the home where my beloved died. And this is the home I have to figure out how to live in a new way.

I know the only way to walk through this world is to hold a multitude of joys and sorrows simultaneously, but more importantly to hold them and look at them with clear eyes. And it’s so hard.