Homeful

I have a magnet depicting a child running into her mother’s arms. The caption reads, “Home is in my mother’s arms.” Mom gave it to me when I was single and I’ve had it for who knows, maybe eight years? I just returned from a three week stay at her house in Spokane, Washington and I admit it felt very much like home. After the first shock of her house seeming small compared to my childlike perspective on space, I felt very comfortable.  At ease. At home.

But it wasn’t my home.  Her pans weren’t mine and her stove worked differently.  I couldn’t cook like myself in her kitchen.  My food wasn’t my food.  Her computer didn’t have the programs I was used to, so blogging was difficult.  Most of all my husband wasn’t there.  After one week with us, he returned to Miami to work and spend his free time renovating our kitchen.  I was with my boys, but not Andres.

Home is in my husband’s arms.

After a cross-country red-eye with an infant and toddler, I broke down in tears and fell into Andres’ arms, making the boys wait for their Daddy kisses.  Me first.  It was always us first, but parenthood has preempted our marriage more often than we’d like.  Seeing him waiting with a baggage cart, so happy to see us, I knew I was home.

And yet…

As we pulled up to our house it seemed familiar, but not entirely like home. The rooms seemed smaller than I’d remembered, though it had only been three weeks. Of course my kitchen was completely changed, but there was something else wrong. Although the head count was complete: Andres, Max, Jack and me, 1, 2, 3, 4. Someone was missing: my mom, the boys’ nana. We had had such a wonderful visit. Max and Jack blossomed in developmental leaps and bounds which always happens when Nana is around. And I was Rebecca, not just mama, not just Mrs. Cofiño. I was a person whose life predated my time in Miami.

I don’t like living in Miami. If Andres hadn’t proposed, I would have moved the year I got married. Miami is a great place for a vacation, but it’s brutal heat never felt like the warmth of home to me. I know we will move one day. We will come back to visit family and friends and I will get teary because this city will always be my children’s birthplace. How is that not home?

Am I homeless or homeful? Is it a question similar to the cup half empty or half full? I admit to a massive case of wanderlust. I think I moved to a new city every year of my twenties. I used to think I was afraid of change, but once I started I found it made me alive.  It is easy to explore when you know you always have a home waiting for you.  I came to see my life as having multiple homes.  One was always my home-base with mom and her purple bathtub. The other was wherever my stuff happened to be.  It’s amazing how quickly a place can feel like your own when you see familiar objects all around.

I’m reminded of a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke which begins, “You see, I want a lot./ Perhaps I want everything…” I want to live everywhere. Home with my mom, my husband, my boys. Home by the ocean, the mountains, the desert. Home in the city and home in the country.  Home in the tropics and in a land with thundering autumns and breathtaking springs. I want a lot. I love too much to be contained by any one place which means I’m either full of homes or completely without one. Is there any common ground to which to cling?

Outside my mother’s house there is a towering Willow tree, so enormous it’s broken branches made the local news during the 1996 Ice Storm. It was called “Willow Bomb.”  We were proud.  Recently that tree has been nominated for an award I never heard of which sounds prestigious. Outside my house in Miami there is a Royal Poinciana tree. My husband planted it as a sapling about 15 years ago and it now covers our entire front yard with respite shade. In the spring it blossoms in orange-red colors and looks like a giant tropical flower looming larger than our house. People always request offshoots at our yard sales. One day a woman knocked on my door just to tell me how lovely it is.

Home is a house behind a large tree with people behind a door who love me.