Home, or Not?

My conception of home has always been where my stuff is, knowing where I can make a snack and where the ingredients for the snack are, knowing where to find the kitchen gadget I used two years ago that is only needed for one recipe, and where that recipe is stored. Home is the place where I am sloppy me, sad me, singing me, obsessive-compulsive me, and television-binging me with a cat on my lap.

            My home up until May 2023 was a rural ocean town in Northern California, a place I woke up grateful for on a daily basis for its beauty, weather, and friends. I’d moved there in 2003 with my husband John, the location my reward for the drawn-out suffering after John’s business folded and our finances bottomed.

            “Take what money you have and invest in a house, quick,” our bankruptcy attorney told us. We’d been renting in the Bay Area as we found we couldn’t afford to buy there. Our attorney suggested Davis, California, where the housing market remained as stagnant as the heat. I’d only been to Davis once for an hour and declared that enough.

John had a small plot of land left from some investment he’d made a decade before. We were able to sell it, making enough for a down payment if we found the right spot. We’d been visiting a tucked-away coastal town for vacations several times a year. Although the real estate market had taken off in California (except for god-forsaken Davis), our little getaway area proved doable as it was off the beaten path with a nightmare of twisty roads. The getting to and out of, plus the lack of big box stores, kept away flocks of newcomers.

Another reason the town was affordable was that it had lost its milling industry, the number one job supplier. People moved, leaving a housing supply. The town was trying to recover economically and find a new identity.

We felt a lot like, too.

            John agreed to my location choice, but feared he’d be bored. He was used to San Francisco’s excitement. The rural location did have a four-screen movie theater, a couple of parks, and a restaurant called The Restaurant. I loved the area for those very reasons, a sigh of relief after the chaos of the busy, overcrowded San Francisco suburbs. Off we went. First night there, we found you could see the stars at night. All of them. And smell the air’s pureness. Organic. You heard every kind of nature song and saw a plethora of birds. And whales. And seals. There you could behold a sky of such a rich complex blue it turned you breathless.

            We’d found our new house by visiting the coast on weekends, cruising the streets, talking to the one realtor we found open. The house was close to sixty years old with a water heater in the kitchen. The kitchen also contained a stained, tiny refrigerator and few cabinets. But the place had bones and potential.

            The neighbors to the north of us came over with a plate of cookies the same day we arrived in our U-haul. We felt we’d entered Mayberry. We met the neighbors to the south and the east, discovering two other men named John. Soon enough, we made friends outside the neighborhood: a contractor, a handyman, a hotel bartender, several newspaper staff, and the hardware store personnel. We volunteered a few times at the Grange breakfast. I joined the writing community, building a healthy social network and a plethora of friends. Never before had we attained such an enriched life, meeting one person after another who introduced us to more until we felt like fifty percent of the town’s residents were our family.

            John and I couldn’t afford to dine out after the bankruptcy. To make our week festive, we took to visiting the butcher shop in its quaint downtown location on Saturday mornings to pick up skirt or flank steak. We stopped at Safeway for Brussel sprouts and potatoes. Together, we cooked dinner, John chopping, me seasoning, us stopping to slow dance to whatever song was playing on NPR before “Prairie Home Companion” started. We laughed at our silliness. What should have been a time to feel sorry for ourselves for our lack of moolah became our most cherished, romantic phase. We relished in our humble existence—sharing a fixer upper we couldn’t fix and our simple fare—because we had each other and our rich life. This was the place where we lived, but the glory was within and around us. Our hearts swelled with the moments, the memories, and the joys.

            We’d had other dwellings with other kitchens, and they didn’t feel special. No magic molecules circulated around or inside those other walls. Our cashless existence in Northern California held warmth: the intimacy between us and our brothers and sisters by other mothers and fathers. Our home, our town, and our part of the state held the scenery, the majesty, and the vibrancy of love and gratitude.

            When my husband developed a terminal illness and passed away, I decided to sell that house. It had turned gloomy, despite my having it finally remodeled to my satisfaction, a project to keep me occupied in the years after the love of my life died. Completing the task didn’t bring him back. Nothing could bring him back.

            John didn’t leave me with life insurance or a paid-off mortgage. Instead, he left me with medical bills, a mortgage, and a mess. He was never one to part with toys. I had to dispose of a fifty-year-old RV and a thirty-year-old, non-running BMW that housed a family of rats. There were boxes of records he’d inherited from an aunt—her beloved collection that he’d allowed to disintegrate. Unopened cartons littered the garage floor from when we’d first unpacked the U-haul decades ago. Stacked on top of these were bags and bins with remnants of John’s unfinished “honey dos”: hardened grout, bags of screws, a dusty soldering iron, and yards of unspooled irrigation line. Cleaning the garage took eight trips to the dump by a crew of three with a truck and trailer.

            When I decided to retire, I closed the front door of my coastal home for the last tim. I left the kitchen and the many images of us in it behind. I left my career, my friends, my community. It ripped my heart out, leaving a gaping hole in my chest, but I needed to reduce my cost of living. That meant going to another state.

  Growing up, home had been in a podunk Missouri town, a third of the yards decorated with Virgin Mary statues, a place established by German Catholics. I lived with an abusive, rage-a-holic father, a mother who devoted her life to him alone, and five siblings who had learned that it was every man for himself. I hated every inch of those backward streets and high-tailed it within months after my high school graduation. I landed for a time in Texas, then Colorado, until I gravitated to California. California proved to be a “me” state: open-minded, community-oriented, progressive, and creative. There, I reclaimed my real name, shedding the family’s “Kathy” for my true Katherine. I tried out careers, jumping from secretary to cosmetologist to produce saleswoman to college student to college instructor and, finally, a college administrator. California was right for me, but when I decided to relocate—back to Missouri of all places, I packed my past identities in the car with me.

I chose a Kansas City suburb. Still progressive, despite overall state politics. There’s lots of crazy drivers and people with bad grammar. There’s also chiggers, snow, snakes, and high humidity. However, Missouri offers reconnection with siblings, nieces, nephews, and great nieces. There’s an influx of stores and services: an instant oil change shop, a dry cleaners, a shoe repair, veterinarians, dentists, a full range of medical doctors and hospitals—all services the tiny coastal town had lacked. There’s lightening bugs with their flash of joy. Plus, Missouri trees hold as much wonder as the ocean. They’re grand and intricate and leave one breathless in their own right.

I bought a two-story house that needs work, but I eliminated a mortgage. I put in new toilets, a catio, new flooring, and added new paint. It’s a start.

I still miss the sound of harbor seals calling at night, the fog horns, and my dear writing family. The losses tug on me. The first time back in California after leaving, I felt a surge of comfort when I saw those familiar street names, yet the streets themselves were foreign and no longer mine. There was new construction, new murals, and strange new people hanging out with my friends. I woke up with no purpose, no projects to tinker with, and no agenda. I was untethered, a leaf in the wind.

“It’s so strange to be here,” I said to my sisters-by-other-mothers. “I’m happy, yet sad when I look around. Everything moved on without me.”

In my Missouri residence, I do call the rooms where I hang my clothes, store my tools, and stack my pots and pans, home. I’m making a few friends and adjusting, but progress is slow.

I know I can’t go backward and reclaim what I had. I have to move forward.

But my heart remains in Northern California, disconnected from where I am.

It’s floating within that glorious, coastal blue sky.