Beyond the South, Beyond Home

The second day we were here, my mom and I ran errands to the nearest Target. I was overwhelmed and shocked, and felt like I had a rock in my stomach every time I went outside. Everything was so unfamiliar, and it frightened me - like a refrain, I kept wondering "how can I raise a family in a place I don't know? What is true, when I don't even know the earth beneath my feet?"

It got better. Slowly. Summer helped.

The week we moved into our new house, Tom sat me on the couch after we got the kids in bed and said "I've been saving this song for you for when we had our house." I cried through the whole thing and I cry every time I listen to it.

This video gives me hope. It still doesn't feel like home here yet - it still feels so strange, and often lonely and hard. It's so easy to lose my moorings when I am living in a place where I have no history. I put my hands out to catch the wisdom of my ancestors and my hands grab nothing but empty air. No one that is kin to me has put their bones in this ground, or watched the seasons come and go for generations so that it is a rhythm that echoes in their blood. Southerners are so fiercely loyal - to place, to memory, to tradition, to our families. To be in a place with none of those things is like having amnesia and being homeless both at once.

But this song gives me great hope that it won't be like this forever - that after we put our work and our hearts into this new place, we'll look up and find it's become home.

Lyrics:
We will call this place our home,
The dirt in which our roots may grow.
Though the storms will push and pull,
We will call this place our home.

We’ll tell our stories on these walls.
Every year, measure how tall.
And just like a work of art,
We’ll tell our stories on these walls.

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.

A little broken, a little new.
We are the impact and the glue.
Capable of more than we know,
We call this fixer upper home.

With each year, our color fades.
Slowly, our paint chips away.
But we will find the strength
And the nerve it takes
To repaint and repaint and repaint every day.

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind.
Let our hearts, like doors, open wide, open wide.
Settle our bones like wood over time, over time.
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.
Give us bread, give us salt, give us wine.

Smaller than dust on this map
Lies the greatest thing we have:
The dirt in which our roots may grow
And the right to call it home.

When I listen to this song, I'm reminded that my family did not always live in the South. We left our generational homes hundreds of years ago and came to this country. We clung to the family with brought with us and over the years, our English and Irish traditions changed and our homes became old and familiar. I recall that what makes home are the people we call into it to share the love we pour out. The song is part prayer, part mantra, part battlecry - moving me beyond the South and beyond my clinging thoughts of home.

Someday, by God's grace, and a great deal of hard work, we might have the right to call Michigan home.