Last week our writing group had a discussion about place. Where do you consider your home?

I identify as a Kansan even though I haven’t lived there for over sixty-five years. It still feels like home. I have family in several towns across the state from Missouri to Colorado. Whenever I am in Kansas, I am home. I grew up with a large extended family around. Some were city folks, some farm folks. The common meeting place was my great-grandparents’ house where generations gathered for Sunday dinners or family celebrations. My widowed grandmother lived with and took care of her parents in their declining years. After my great-grandparents died, two of her sisters, one a divorcee and one a widow, moved in with her. Then their brother who was also widowed joined them. It remained THE family home for many more years. Oh, the stories that house on High Street could tell. It will always be home even though it passed from family ownership decades ago. There is something that is intrinsically Midwest in my bones.

I spent many summers of my youth with my grandparents in a small town in Colorado. No parents – just doting grandparents. My grandfather was a trainman on the Union Pacific Railroad and was out of town overnight sometimes on runs to Green River, Wyoming. I got to sleep in his bed when he was gone. They had twin beds in their bedroom and I had a big double bed in my room. I loved the cozy twin next to my grandmother. Grandma had a vegetable garden and canned her summer harvest. She had a flower garden that filled my senses with colors and smells. I sat under the weeping willow in the front yard to play with a neighbor girl. Summer at the base of the Rockies was glorious. We fished at Estes Park (Grandpa baited the hook). We always caught enough to cook and eat there with some left to take home for breakfast. The wriggly rainbow trout were put in his woven basket that hung in the water at the edge of the river letting cool water flow through so they were fresh when he cooked them on the portable gas grill. Grandma packed potato salad, buttermilk biscuits, fresh fruit, and cookies for our riverside picnics. Back in their neighborhood, I took long walks with Grandpa, stopping at the ice cream shop for candy cane ice cream. We took trips to the big city of Denver to visit aunts, uncles, and cousins. Grandma and Grandpa listened to baseball every night on the radio. It was a great place to visit, but it wasn’t home.

The bulk of my adult life, over forty years, was spent in the Pacific Northwest where I remained a stranger, an outsider.  Even though it was there that I met my beloved, created a family, and had a boatload of friends, it was never home. I love the city of Seattle because of the variety of world cultures that settled and thrive there. You are never far from a festival, an event to celebrate people from far-flung lands. I love my many Seattle area friends. I loved being able to snow ski Mount Rainier and sail Puget Sound, horseback ride and play tennis, most of the year in mild temperatures. Wonderful ethnic food, an enormous variety of world-class arts –  museums, theater, music – play a big part in Seattle’s identity. I once wrote a twenty-page paper on the City I Love to Hate – extolling its history and all its virtues and why I suffered in its bounty. I was claustrophobic, confined, imprisoned by the environment. A blue sky is sporadic, appearing a few times a month (occasionally never making an appearance for weeks) and rarely bringing warmth. Clouds hung like Damocles’ sword, low overhead, threatening gloom. My feet never felt dry, my hands never warm. A pervasive smell of mold clung to everything. Trees obscured the horizon and all potential vistas of mountains and lakes. People were closed as tightly as their coats and sweaters, bundled for safety, cliquish.

During our adventure traveling through the contiguous forty-eight states for fourteen months in 1984-1985, we found a place that felt like it could be another home. Tucson. It is ringed by five mountain ranges, not snowy like the Rockies, but rugged and beautiful, rising from the Sonoran Desert. The Santa Catalinas, the Tortolitas, the Rincons, the Santa Rita, and Tucson ranges. These mountains display a mind-blowing range of color at sunrise, sunset, and when clouds filter the desert light. I have photos of them dressed in reds, oranges, blues, purples, and golds. During monsoon season they flaunt a verdant green as vegetation awakens in the nearly tropical heat and humidity. But we still had a life (family and work) in Bellevue, Washington; but when the kids were raised and it was time for retirement we headed south. I am grateful every morning I wake up to the sunshine. I even learned, after many years, to treasure rain again. It was such a curse in Seattle. Anxiety no longer attacks me when dark rain clouds appear on the horizon. They are temporary. I know they will make the cacti and fruit trees blossom, wildflowers erupt into blankets of color and sate thirsty desert critters. I welcome monsoon season like a native. My feet are firmly planted in this place. Breathing clear air, embracing dark skies at night with diamond-bright galaxies shifting overhead, walking trails and communing with desert animals that cross our path or visit our yard, make this place home.

This poem is about the four places that influenced me from childhood until now. Home is more than just an address, a dot on a map. It is a place where your soul can breathe.

Where I Am From

I am from the traveling wind, deep roots,
Wide blue skies, far horizons, and waving wheat,
Great-grandma’s raw onions by her supper plate,
Great-grandpa’s spittoon beside his rocker,
Refrigerator on the back porch and dirt fruit cellar,
Fireflies on summer nights.

I am from deep dark earth and snowy mountain highs
Grandpa’s railroad uniform smelling of wool and tobacco
Fishing at Estes Park, summer night baseball,
Honeysuckle, snapdragons, and putting up the beans
A ringer on the washing machine
Cold fried chicken, white bread with butter and sugar

I am from endless gray skies, armies of black-green sentinel fir trees
Reaching to the smothering clouds
A city where art and music blend past and present
A thousand cultures mingle like flavors in a stew
The drizzle of cold, the smell of mold
Wind in the sails, islands in the fog

I am from the knife-edged peaks with mysterious crevices
Rising from the desert floor.
Dark starry nights, quiet as serenity
Deer, coyote, and javelina share their space.
The soul-filling scent of the creosote bush after a summer monsoon.
The endless blue of sky and translucent flower of prickly pear.