Home to Me

November 12, 2015 / Julie / 10 Comments

Over the summer, a beautiful post by Laura Kelly Fanucci got me to thinking about the concept of “home.” She writes:

Right now I am home.

Sitting in the house that we own. Where we are raising our children. Where mail arrives daily bearing my name. Where we welcome family and entertain friends. Where I pull weeds and paint walls. Where my car pulls into the driveway and my shoes slip off in the doorway.

And I am writing about going home. Which is not here.

“Home” is something I’ve spent much of my life thinking about: Growing up in a state where my family has been for hundreds of years (and so having a strong sense of place), but in a part of the state where I had no family (and so feeling disconnected from that place). Moving out of the home in which I was raised. Watching the land around my family’s homes sprout housing developments. Trying to find something to call home as a young adult, when I had no immediate family to bind me to the communities in which Iived. Building a sense of home with my husband and then my children. Working to feel like my physical, legal home is one on an emotional level too.

(Overthink things much, Julie?)

So I wrote my own post on home, trying to process it all. When I shared it, I found that the topic resonated with people. Friends and readers had had similar experiences – or different experiences, but similar struggles in coming to terms with what “home” meant in their lives. A couple of friends even suggested that they would like to share their own stories.

I stewed on that thought, wondering how I could encourage others to share their stories of home – where they’ve found it, how they’ve sought it, or whatever else feels meaningful to them on the subject. A couple of months later, chatting with some connections I’ve made through blogging, I settled on the idea of a blog hop. That is, of a series that is shared by a number of bloggers, each of whom contributes one post on her own blog.

So that’s what we’re doing. Now. This here post is the introduction to the blog hop, which we’re calling “Home to Me.” During the two weeks from Friday, November 13 (tomorrow!) through Thanksgiving Day, more than a dozen bloggers will share about what the concept of “home” means to them.

They include women who have moved from home to home every couple of years and those who have said final goodbyes to homes in which they’ve spent their whole childhoods. One woman is actually raising her own children in the home in which she was raised. Some are figuring out how to raise their families in proximity to their hometowns, some far from them. One watched in wonder as her adopted children found home with her. A German friend of mine will write about the sense of home she found here in the United States while a foreign exchange student. I, in turn, will write about the sense of home I found in the small German village from which one of my ancestors came some two hundred years ago.

“Home” can been elusive or steady. It can be found in unexpected places. It is sought and cherished and mourned. It is wrapped up in the people we love. As we turn our minds and hearts toward home at the beginning of this holiday season, please visit the following blogs to explore where/what/who is “Home to Me.”

November 13 – Julie @ These Walls
November 14 – Leslie @ Life in Every Limb
November 15 – Ashley @ Narrative Heiress
November 16 – Rita @ Open Window
November 17 – Svenja, guest posting @ These Walls
November 18 – Anna @ The Heart’s Overflow
November 19 – Debbie @ Saints 365
November 20 – Melissa @ Stories My Children Are Tired of Hearing
November 21 – Amanda @ In Earthen Vessels
November 22 – Daja and Kristina @ The Provision Room
November 23 – Emily @ Raising Barnes
November 24 – Annie @ Catholic Wife, Catholic Life
November 25 – Nell @ Whole Parenting Family
November 26 – Geena @ Love the Harringtons

Thanksgiving Eve

November 26, 2014 / Julie / 2 Comments

This morning I sit surrounded by unexpected, soft quiet. From the corner of my eye, I see our first snow of the season. It falls fast and thick. My boys are entranced, and so am I.

How soothing that this lovely blanket has come to fall upon us, covering our unraked leaves and the toys my boys leave scattered behind our house. It smoothes our roughness, disguises our messes. It insulates us. And when we glance at our windows and see only a mottled span of white and gray, somehow the space inside our home seems softer and smoother too.

Of course, we don’t have to drive in it. We’re snug indoors, ready to commence the prepping and the baking for tomorrow. Butternut squash, onions, cranberries, cherries, and chocolate – they all lie in wait.

But I have a few minutes to think and pray on the things and people for whom I am grateful – and I’ll take them. I know how blessed I’ve been.

I have a lively, loving, little family and a big, beautiful home. I have an extended family who support and love and even entertain. I have layer upon layer of good, smart, interesting friends: The few I’ve known since childhood; those I acquired in high school and college, in Washington and Annapolis; those I’ve worked with and prayed with; those alongside whom I’m raising my children. I even have some I’ve never met in person: lovely, kind women I know through blogging and long, thoughtful emails.

We have sufficient heating oil and plentiful food. We have electricity and too many clothes. We have peace in our home and our community.

Layer upon layer of goodness.

And I know, of course, that there are far too many people who do not have these particular blessings. Loneliness, hunger, cold, unrest and violence visit too, too many. So alongside my gratitude, I think of and pray for them. For those who long for families of their own, who struggle to provide for the families they have, who suffer violence, who live in fear.

If you’re among them, know that you’re in my prayers.

And whether you are among them or you’re not, I hope that you too get a few soft, quiet moments in which to sit. I hope that this Thanksgiving, you feel the weight of your own particular blessings. And I hope that your blessings do nothing but increase in the coming seasons of Advent and Christmas.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours, from me and mine.

7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 22): Thanksgiving Edition

November 29, 2013 / Julie / Leave a comment

Today I figured I’d offer 7 Thanksgiving-related things that I’m thankful for. (Is that “Thanksgiving” enough for you?)

—1—

I am so incredibly thankful – and I feel it most acutely at this time of the year – to have a little family of my own. I’ve talked about it before (here and here), but Brennan and I both spent about a decade of our adult lives single (single single, as I put it in one of those pieces) before we started dating. For much of that time – with no boyfriend, no dates, not even any real prospects – I seriously wondered whether I would ever have a family of my own. I never took that “husband and kids” future for granted. I hoped and prayed for it, but eventually I had to try to come to terms with the idea that it might not happen.

For this reason, I feel a particular sympathy for singles, of course, but also for couples experiencing fertility problems. I’m sure I don’t understand half of what they go through, but I very much understand the heartache of wondering on that one, very important point: Will I ever have a family of my own?

When I think on gratitude (and I’m grateful to have had so many reasons to think on it), the image of walking tends to come to mind. “I walk with gratitude,” is how I think of it. With this step, I think with gratitude on the big, loving, supportive family I was born into. With this one, I think of all the friends who have added so much to my life. With these few, I think on how I’ve been blessed to be able to live out my interests in community, church, politics, history, music, and service. With this one, I think on my kind, handsome, interesting husband. With these two, I think on my lively, loving, gorgeous boys. With this one, I think on my tiny son moving within me.

And I am wowed. I have been so blessed.

—2—

I am thankful that my childhood Thanksgiving memories include something so wonderfully unusual for an American to have experienced: a blessing of the hounds before a fox hunt. When I was a child, my grandparents had a farm next to a historic manor that sat on something like 1,000 acres. On Thanksgiving morning, we and other members of the local community would pull into the Manor’s long drive and walk out onto a grassy area where the hunters and horses and hounds were all gathered. We kids would be giddy with excitement, staring at all the horse trailers and the beautiful animals with red-clad hunters on their backs. We’d walk out on the field, shivering yet showing off our holiday finest, trying to get glimpses of the hounds between all the people milling about. After a while, a priest would say a blessing over the hounds, and they would be off. Then we’d all pile back into our cars and drive next-door to my grandparents’ for our big (midday) dinner.

—3—

I’m thankful that with our big, pitch-in-together family, we get the benefits of a massive spread of food at Thanksgiving without anybody killing ourselves over it. My grandparents roast the turkey and do sweet potatoes and a cranberry salad while everyone else brings the appetizers, the other sides, and the desserts. Each of the dozen or so families that usually come bring 2-3 dishes, and we have more food (and a better selection!) than anybody could possibly want. Yet (I don’t think) any of us feel like we’re under the terrible stress that so many Thanksgiving cooks describe this time of the year.

(For anybody who cares about such things, here’s what our spread usually looks like: turkey, gravy, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, sauerkraut, green bean casserole, corn pudding, spinach or broccoli casserole, green salad, cranberry salad, ambrosia or a Jello salad, rolls, a variety of dips or finger foods, pumpkin pie, apple pie, some other pie(s), pumpkin roll, cookies and/or brownies. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.)

I promise you it’s not as bad as it sounds: we generally have around 50 people to feed.

—4—

I’m SO thankful that this year… drum roll… my parents took my boys home with them on Thanksgiving night! And they’re keeping them until Saturday evening!

That’s like 48 child-free hours! I have about two weeks’ worth of tasks to fit into the 30 hours I’ve got left, so I’d better get cracking!

—5—

Following on number four, I’m thankful that this year I actually got to play cards with my family on Thanksgiving evening. My family is really into cards and board games and though I love them too, normally I’m chasing after small boys or my (deservedly) tired husband is itching to go home. But this year the boys went home with Mom and Dad and the hubby and I had driven separately, so mama was free! It felt marvelous.

—6—

I’m thankful that my husband fits into my side of the family so well. He’s from Minnesota and we’re in the greater DC area, so we don’t get to see his family as much as we’d like to. But Brennan really enjoys being around my family and especially loves talking politics and hunting with my brother, uncles, and cousins, so he looks forward to these gatherings as much as I do. My uncle has started a tradition of having a “turkey shoot” (really, a trap shoot) at his small farm on Thanksgiving morning, which Brennan looks forward to all year. So he starts Thanksgiving day there with the trap shoot and my aunt’s delicious homemade cinnamon buns, while the boys and I enjoy the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade with some homemade goodies of our own. Then we all meet up at my grandparents’ for dinner.

—7—

I’m thankful that, a couple of years ago, I had the good sense to decide to view the holidays through an ultra-realistic lens.

Before I was married with my own children, I had these perfect little images in my head of what it would be like to create perfect little holiday experiences for my perfect little hypothetical children. (Okay, I wasn’t that unrealistic: I had enough exposure to small children to know that none of them – my own someday-children included – would be perfect.) But I had enough invested in this idea of perfect, sparkly, greeting-card-worthy holiday scenes to become pretty darned disappointed with my own less-than-perfect first holidays as a wife and mother.

So after a couple of years, I knew I had to do something about it. I couldn’t walk away from every holiday, ever, for the rest of my life, feeling disappointed. I needed to lower my expectations. (That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? But it was true.) I needed to realize that any stresses, difficulties, or hang-ups I have with myself or with others on a normal day would be there on a holiday too.

I needed to give up my ideas of fancy special-occasion clothes and pretty place-settings for an elaborate holiday dinner. Because that’s just not what we do. In my family we do a rowdy, casual potluck for something like 50 people. We haven’t had an “adult table” and a “kid table” in years: we have people sitting on every chair, sofa, and patch of floor they can find. We no longer bring out the silver and the real plates: we’re smart enough to use disposables. We no longer have a roaring fire: it’s just too darned hot with all those bodies packed into a moderate-sized home.

In my family, the joy of the holiday is in being together. We do not prioritize taste or décor or even peace. All that counts is that we’re together.

(Let me express my pride for a moment that my one cousin who works in retail, a teenager, has her priorities enough in order that she gave up time-and-a-half at her workplace yesterday to come to our family Thanksgiving dinner. We’re thankful that she had a choice, and even more thankful that she chose us.)

I’m thankful to have finally embraced that “All that counts is that we’re together” thing. The first few holidays of my married life were the most miserable I ever experienced. The last few have been the absolute best. I attribute that entirely to two words: realistic expectations.

A belated Happy Thanksgiving to you all! Be sure to stop over to Jen’s to check out the rest of the Quick Takes!