It was so unexpected, the way it showed up.

There is someone staying with us, someone helping out in these crazy days of adjustment, someone who burned the side of a chair because of a not-thinking mistake, and when I came downstairs the early morning after I smelled melting microfiber but was too exhausted to investigate, I ran my hand along the ugly, startling black of an arm that should have been cream, and I cried.

And cried and cried and cried.

Because it can’t be fixed, because it’s a whole black arm, because we’ve tried so hard to keep pieces of our life normal and nice and presentable, and it’s next to impossible with six rowdy boys, and this destruction wasn’t even done by one of the children but by someone who knows what a hot pot can do to fabric.

It felt like reality giving me a big, fat slap in the face.

You will never have or keep or make anything that will survive destruction, it said.
You will never not be embarrassed to have the neighbors over, it said.
You will never have a nice home, it said.

In this home there are holes in walls and milk splatters on doors and dining room chairs with loose legs we can’t trust will hold us when we sit. There are mirrors with perpetual finger smudges and plants that are dying and carpet that has seen much better days.

There is a favorite armchair with a blackened arm.

This is a home that is shabby and ragged and worn out.

This is a home I would like to change, make better, beautify.

///

The first home I remember I only see in flashes, a trailer in a sunny place with a playground in the backyard, or somewhere close, where my brother and I would kick our feet high enough to reach the sky, or so we thought. It was bright and small and charming.

And then there was a home across the street from a school, where I watched my brother walk out the door at the beginning of a day and then walk back in at the end, knowing he’d sit and teach me all he’d learned in his kindergarten class.

In this home I remember a playroom where my mom found a snake in our toy box and ran out of the room screaming so we all chased her like it was some kind of game. I remember sharing a room with my brother and sister, rolling from the top bunk where my brother slept and hitting the floor so hard I couldn’t even cry, could only lie there on a hard floor and try to remember how to breathe.

I remember seeing my mom hacking snakes into pieces with a hoe and listening to someone playing piano so it echoed through the wood-floor living room and watching my dad driving away on a motorcycle and the way the yellow curtain above the front door swished, swished, swished, until I could not hear his motorcycle anymore, the way it felt like I’d just fallen from the top bunk again, because his leaving hit me so hard I couldn’t cry, could only lie there and try to remember how to breathe.

This home was dark and light and sad and funny and ugly and beautiful and full of paradox.

///

There was another home with magnolias in the front yard and so many pecan trees in the back that my Nana would pay us to gather them when she came to visit, and because it was money and it was for Nana’s pecan pie, we’d do it for hours and hours, bringing in buckets of pecans.

I remember forts in climbing trees and a tire swing we used to make our kittens dizzy and watch them walk and blackberries we’d soak in milk and sugar for an afternoon snack.

I remember sitting on my dad’s lap with a bowl of cucumbers soaked in vinegar, and I remember the dark hallway I could never walk down, only sprint down, and I remember birthday parties with lines of kids playing Red Rover and getting clotheslined by the solid of two clasped hands.

This home was chipped and wobbly and not quite secure, in a way that could not be explained, like the old porch swing that hung out front.

///

The years turn a little hazy after that, because there was a move out of state and a move back, and those homes were unexpected and traumatic and lonely.

There was the one in Ohio, where I slipped down cement stairs the day of my birthday and tore my new pantyhose all the way down the leg; where we came home to an empty house and locked all the doors tight behind us, because there was no money to pay someone to watch us and it wasn’t exactly the best neighborhood; where I slept every night with a doll I’d had since I was a baby, even though I was too old for dolls, resting the back of my hand on her cool face all those nights I could hear a mom and dad fighting through the walls.

It was the home that told us the truth about a man we loved and another woman and a baby on the way, all laid out on an answering machine because someone thought we should know.

It was the home that said life would never be the same. And it wasn’t.

That home led to another home, one we shared with a grandmother, because a divorce was coming, and I don’t remember much of this home, only frustration and resentment and a bitter root that had to be carved out, years later.

I remember a brother with ulcers and a mom who had to work too much and three kids once more squished into one room, even though they were all too old to share.

I remember pine cones and watching out a window to see who would be first, Mom or Memaw, and Metallica blasting from an open garage, speaking what we could not.

That home was cold and disappointing and hard, like the sidewalk out front where we would roller blade for hours, just to get out of the tension that threatened to break us all.

///

My last childhood home is the one where my parents still live today.

The day we moved in, the windows had a film of dirt so thick you could hardly see through them. The carpet was rust-colored and shabby and smelled ancient. The porch bent in the middle.

I remember feeling afraid to bring my first boyfriend there, because surely he wouldn’t want to be with someone as poor as me. I remember, for the first time, not wanting to have my birthday parties at home, because what would all those classmates think? I remember wishing I lived in her house or in his or in that one so much nicer than mine.

I was ashamed of that home.

It didn’t matter that this home held memories of a sister falling asleep in the closet while she was dressing for school and how we laughed about it so hard we were crying, for the first time in years. It didn’t matter that it held the miracle of a brother walking the road to a canal where he would fish and find himself. It didn’t matter that it held the victory of a mother who groped her way back through the dark.

It didn’t matter that it held a second chance in all its rickety, peeling walls.

Because all I could see, then, were those holes in the porch and the way the front door stuck when we tried to open it and all the dirt and dust still left in the corners after hours of trying to scrub it clean.

All I could see was what glared from the outside.

///

All I can see in my home is what glares from the outside, too.

Holes in walls. Splatters on doors. A burned arm on a cream chair. Especially that.

But in all these days after, the truth of home begins to bloom.

Home is not a place. It’s not four walls and a roof and perfectly arranged and preserved furniture.

It’s them. It’s me. It’s a heart-space.

Home cannot be contained. It is carried. Given. Received.

I can see it all the way through the time line of a life, the leavings, the moves, the starting-overs. Home never changed, even though those houses did, year after year.

Home is love, overwhelming, pure, unbridled, burning the arms of a mama wrapping all her boys in hugs.

Sure, I might grieve the destruction of that favorite chair, because it’s real, and it can’t be fixed, at least not right now, and it will always stare at me from a room inside my house, but it does not tell the whole truth of my home. It never will.

Home is more than a chair where a mama fed all her babies.

Home is an 8-year-old writing a sweet, sweet note to his little brother, and it’s a 5-year-old helping a twin put on shoes so he can play outside, too, and it’s a 2-year-old saying that what he’s thankful for tonight is his mama’s beautiful eyes, even though she spoke a little too harshly to him half an hour ago.

Home is a husband making his wife lunch every single day, because he knows she won’t take the time to eat unless he does, and it’s a 4-year-old playing Battleship with a brother, and it’s a last baby grinning at a mama in the early morning hours, when no one else is awake.

This home is radiant and wild and free.

It is lovelier than any home we could build with two hands and a bank full of money.

And I am so glad I get to live here.