My Own Home State

My brother-in-law and his son, Easton, MD

I spent most of this fall in my home state of Maryland. Each time I return there I am struck by its beauty. This post is an effort to capture a glimpse of the place where I am from, and the people I love who are still there. 

Michael taking my sister and her husband out for a sail, Easton

We rented a beautiful place for our family to get together for a few days, on the Eastern Shore. The house was right on the Miles River, which feeds into the Chesapeake Bay.

The girls, Easton

It was a chilly September evening, but my two eldest nieces were not going to let the swimming pool go to waste....

Shoes! Easton

The adults wore flip flops, but my nephew preferred sturdier hiking sandals.

Headquarters, Greenbelt

Our home base this year was the home of my dear friend Kim (having two Kims in the house did sometimes get confusing), and her husband Joe. I stayed much longer than I had planned, but Kim and Joe were endlessly welcoming. Well, Joe did start using "goddamn" as an honorific when addressing my husband, but that was just his way of showing that he cares.

Kim and a chilled Chardonnay Viognier, Greenbelt

Most days ended with wine and snacks, and the house was full of conversation and easy laughter. I liked this chardonnay viognier blend, but the most memorable bottle we drank was a Blank Ankle Vineyards 2006 Crumbling Rock red table wine. Black Ankle is a Mt. Airy vineyard, and it's great that the days of describing a bottle as "pretty good, you know, considering it's a Maryland wine" are over. Black Ankle is winning national awards, and can be served without any apologies whatsoever. 

Baxter reporting for duty, Greenbelt

This is Baxter, our handsome Siberian Boxer Beagle. He lives with his other family in Greenbelt now, because it would have been too awful to transplant a husky mix to the Saudi desert. He came over to Kim and Joe's house for visits while I was in town. Here he is staking his claim to the spot under the dining table. His job is to anchor people's feet as they dine.

 GVFD Crab Feast, Greenbelt

We timed our trip so that we could be home to help sling crabs and pour drinks at the Greenbelt Volunteer Fire Department annual fundraising crab feast. This is the fire department where Michael volunteered as a medic when we lived in Greenbelt. I recaptured a little of the satisfaction that comes with volunteering in your hometown when I put on my old company 35 t-shirt and hauled trays of crabs from the steamer truck into the firehall, to the tables packed full of my friends and former neighbors.

Service with a Smile, GVFD, Greenbelt

My eldest niece ate her share of crabs, and then decided it would be more fun to help her grandma and aunt and uncle at the crab feast than to just sit around. The next generation of volunteering has begun!

Garden Party at David and Jan's, Cheverly

For the second year in a row, our friends David and Jan feted our return to Maryland. David is my oldest friend, though he's really not that old! (Why isn't there a word for the person who has been your friend longer than anyone else?) ANYway, this year they put on a gorgeous lunch in their back garden, together with their next door neighbor Andrea, with whom we have become friends thanks to David and Jan.

Drinks and fruit, Cheverly

David and the Elephant Ears, Cheverly

Every year David's garden is more lush, and now he's also hatching plans for Andrea's yard. He gave me the tour after I sprayed on the usual half can of mosquito repellent. Many other people can wander around Maryland unprotected. Not me. 

Kim and Greg, skatin' it up! Laurel

Kim is a retired DC Roller Girl, and her newest thing is learning to dance skate. I thought dance skating was the pinnacle of coolness when I was a junior high schooler. Kim and her friend (and rink guard) Greg took me skating a a few times at Laurel Skate Center, which is also where I went skating when I was a kid. They say you can never go back, but I went back to Laurel Skate Center and it was EXACTLY the same. 

Kims on Wheels, Laurel

They've still got the same sign on the back wall that lights up to say "all skate," "reverse," "trios," and "slow down." And the disco ball? It's still spinning, and those flashes of light chasing my wheels across the roller rink floor were still magic, just like when I was eleven.

 Trailer of pumpkins, kid not included, Greenbelt

I was in Greenbelt for several Sundays, so of course I visited Greenbelt Farmers Market. It is not the same: it's getting better! This year, several new vendors signed on, including a crepe vendor! We had our eye on that crepe stand when we were visiting other area markets four years in in preparation for founding the Greenbelt market. Now people do their shopping, then get a crepe and sit in the grass next to the city parking lot and visit with friends while everybody's kids run around together. What a perfect Sunday morning! The market has just closed for the season, but it'll open again next spring.

Greenbelt Lake path, Greenbelt

Now I'm back in Saudi Arabia, full from a potluck American Thanksgiving feast. I am feeling grateful for my new life here, and also glowing with gratitude for my family, for my Stateside friends, and for the beautiful State of Maryland.

There's No Place Like Home

Returning to Saudi Arabia after seven weeks in India was surreal. We flew out of the steamy and decrepit Kolkata International Airport, smelling slightly of mold and sweat, and changed planes in Dubai. During our layover, we did some window shopping in the airport and saw a 24-karat gold cell phone on sale for $30,000. The Dubai airport was immaculate, echoey, modern and freezing cold. I probably wouldn't have even noticed except that, well, I just came from Calcutta.

While I was away in India, our shipment of household goods had arrived in Saudi Arabia. So when Michael and I walked in the front door, I was greeted with all of our familiar things: a house full of the objects we have collected and lived with during our sixteen years of marriage. There was the threadbare red velvet sofa (with some dog hairs still stuck to the front of it. Oh, I miss my dog! He's back in the States living with his best doggie friend.) There was the Art Nouveau china cabinet and the Danish modern dining room set--both second-hand finds from years ago. My ergonomic office chair! And our bed, oh yes. The most comfortable bed I have ever slept on in my whole life, yes, there it was, made up with the blue cotton sheets that are soft from many washings.

It was great to come back to all of this, and air conditioning, and my own kitchen, and the stereo, and the shower with the great water pressure and all the hot water I want. Oh, heaven! Even all these weeks later, I am still grateful for such luxury. Also, I'm still aware that I can live well without it.

Back in this comfortably feathered nest, I can sit and consider my biggest question: what is home?

I am sheltered here. All my stuff is here, and (more importantly) my husband is here. Is this home? Oh no. We live in a comfortable little bubble here, but we will never be able to call Saudi Arabia home. The cultural disconnect is too vast.

So, home does not equal "where your house is." There is a cultural component to it.

What about my hometown of Greenbelt? Most of my family and friends live there. The farmers market I helped to start still thrives on Sunday mornings, and the yoga studio I built still holds classes there. My sister lives there, in our childhood home, down the street from some of my favorite friends. My in-laws live there, too. This friendly, tightly knit safety net awaits me. This is where my roots are. Is this home? It was. It may well be again. But right now we don't have a house there. We don't have a place that belongs to us, so I don't think of it as home.

So, maybe home is where your house is plus where you feel culturally connected. This has possibilities. 

Then there's Santa Barbara. I have been yearning for California's central coast for quite a while now. Maybe home is Santa Barbara, where my husband has family, where I went to college. The city got its hook in me, and I remain hooked. Some places have a pull of their own. They feel like home even even before the real estate has been purchased, before the roots are down.

So what is home? Is home where your house is, plus where you feel culturally connected, plus where you feel some kind of magnetic attraction to the geographical place itself? Hmm....

As I spin out this Sesame Street-style exercise (to the tune of "One of these things is not like the other"), I wonder what I even mean by "home." What am I looking for? This is not such a random exercise in navel-gazing if you consider this: If you know what you mean by "home," then maybe you can create it. Wherever you go. What if "home" is something you can take with you? Yeah, yeah, "home is where the heart is." Or as the Temptations said, "Papa was a rolling stone. Wherever he laid his hat was his home." But what if that is true? 

And here we are, crashing back into yoga again. One of my yoga teachers often said that during a difficult posture, "you can always come back to your breath. Just come back to your breath." This is also good advice during challenging moments of life generally. When I'm angry: come back to my breath. When I'm afraid, or about to say something I shouldn't: come back to my breath. (I need to keep practicing that one!) Just stop whatever it is I'm about to do, and breathe. Actually feel the air filling my lungs, the breath coming and going from my body. Whether I am aware of it or not, my breath keeps cycling through me. My heart keeps beating too, of course, but my breath is something over which I have some control. I can work with it. I can let it work on me. I always carry it with me. My body is the home of my breath. What if my body is my home? Is that enough?

I am a nester. I love fussing with the furniture, choosing paint colors, hanging pictures, finding new pieces to bring into our house that are reminders of places I've been or have shapes or textures that I find beautiful. So it's hard to reconcile the fact that I take such pleasure in feathering the nest, with the notion that home can be as portable as I am.

I also love cooking at home. The smell of good food being prepared in the kitchen is another big signpost pointing the way towards home. Almost every day, I use my grandmother's iron skillet to fry onions, or scramble eggs, or make a batch of cornbread. Three generations of women in my family have used that skillet in their kitchens. That kind of continuity is a deep, important anchor to home.

Next week, I am traveling to Spain to visit a new friend from my yoga teacher training. She should have some insights on this question of home. She is an American from Kansas, who met her Irish husband while teaching English in Korea. They are now living in a village north of Madrid. Where is their home?

I want to find "home" and settle there. And I am becoming ever more aware that in order to do that, I need to push a little more on the boundaries of what's comfortable for me, what's physically and emotionally possible. To figure out how to get back home, I need to keep venturing away from it. The road towards home continues to twist off into the trees. It's a beautiful day for a drive.