- Make a list of every place you've ever lived.
- For each place on your list, set a timer and write, pen to paper, non-stop for 30-45 minutes.
- Don't try to write about all the places on the same day unless of course you still live in the home you came to direct from the hospital.
- Dig deep. Tell your story. Include memories - good and bad - of the people, images, events, fragrances, sounds that made this place unique.
- Type each writing session.
Because
I'd been thinking and writing about the concept of home, and because the characters
in The Alki Trilogy are all on a quest to find their own places to call home,
and because the third novel in the trilogy, Walking
Home, was scheduled for a spring release, I decided to turn the exercise
into a blog series. In hopes of building interest and conversation around the
topic, I invited other writers to share their thoughts on what defines home for
them. For five months I've posted my own story most Tuesdays and Finding Home: Other Voices every
Thursday.
Home
not only means something a little different for each of us, but it carries dissimilar
weight as well. For me it was heftier than I realized until I wrote this series.
I've given inordinate importance to my years as an ex-pat in Mexico. I've
claimed again and again that I might have stayed, that my life was there, but
that tragedy brought me back to Seattle, brought me home. But maybe the truth
is that home brought me home. That culture and language, roots and blood
brought me home. Home is all those things for me. And there's more.
People
make a place home. Blood, family, yes. Also those I choose to
be my family: friends and neighbors, colleagues and community members. The
people I see daily or weekly. The tall, thin librarian who bikes to work, the
postal worker with long, painted nails, the waitress who wouldn't serve my
daughter a margarita because she knew she wasn't 21 regardless what her false
ID stated. Community is home. It's where I can breathe and thrive.
Home
is the physical environment. I am a Washingtonian. My roots are planted deep in
the forests of the Cascade foothills. The vibrant greens of the hills, the
varied grays of winter, the brilliant blues of summer sky and water are home to
me. Home too is the fragrant salt air off Puget Sound, gentle and breezy in the
summer, harsh and cold in the winter, always laced with the scent of the sea.
Love
makes home. Love of self: self-concept, self-confidence, self-awareness that
make me feel at peace, wherever I find myself. Love of others. Love I give and
love I receive. Always. Unconditional. Love that allows me to kick back and be
myself with the self-knowledge to understand who that self is, what makes it
tick, what gives it joy.
I've
spent my adult life teaching the English language, the past thirty years working
with immigrants and refugees in Seattle. My students have lost all they once
knew. Most will never return to their homelands, their roots. Can roots be
replanted? Is multi-culturalism possible? Could my roots have grown deep enough
for me to find home in Mexico City? I believe so. I believe my students can
build new homes, set new roots here in Seattle, or anywhere in the world,
provided their other needs (sense of self; love of family, friends and
community; physical environment; first language and cultural values) are met
while they are also learning and accepting the language and culture of their
new home. This is one of the lessons I learned from Finding Home: Other Voices, and it is the lesson my characters
learn in The Alki Trilogy.
I
am grateful to the wonderful writers who, by sharing their stories, helped me
understand my own more deeply. Here's a complete list of contributors. Just
click on a name to link to the author's essay.
And
here's my completed exercise for the teachers in the room. Sixteen essays for
fourteen residences, most of which were never homes at all.
3 comments:
Very thoughtful post. Bob and Jack always have good ideas. Think I'll try this. I have felt home in the NW for many years. Think I was coming home here all my life. Now I've been here more than half my life.
I've read the whole series. Didn't always leave comments. Very sincere work there. Probably should come together in a book. Buckminster Fuller wrote that America moves every five (or was it three?) years.That's a lot of homes to get back to so this series touches some nerves.
J
Thank you for your comments historywriter and Jack. It was an adventure that's for sure! A book? Maybe. The process has certainly helped clarify some ideas before my new project can progress into a book.
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