A letter for when you belong nowhere at all.

July 18, 2017

Kansas City, Missouri

A trail of white clipped hair is spread across the living room floor. Pony got a hair cut.  It won't grow back. A loaf of banana bread is baking in the oven. I'm avoiding writing and polishing stainless steel and cleaning the neglected under the sink cabinets.  I've been reading lots of Madeleine, Joan, and Annie, I bet they've scrubbed a few appliances in the same manner.

With a vinegar soaked dish towel in hand, I listen to the kids making videos on the tablet. 

What is your name, she asks.

My name is Hudson.  

Where are you from, she questions. 

I am from America.

Her response is the same.  

Harper, from America.

I pause and wonder, do they actually know where we live?  Am I really asking this question? Yes, I am.  I see no uncertainty on their faces. No one is lost or displaced.  I ask and they can narrow it down to city and state.

And then, 

Out of the mouth of babes, comes the tidal wave and I'm left gasping for air, transported to a thousand different places and countless conversations.

Mom, we live here, but that's not where we're from.

Oh my heart and that's not where we're from...

A world map hangs on the dining room wall. I drew an arrow to the Atlantic shores of the North Carolina coast and wrote, you were here.  I taped pictures of them in the sea on the blue space, so they would always know where they've been, so they would know the world is not some unattainable thing. You were here on this tiny pieces of a great puzzle, connected to a million others.  I place smooth basalt stones from Northern Minnesota on the table and driftwood on the window ledge, so they'll see these treasures and be transported back to the intoxicating beauty.  In a few weeks, we'll journey across mountains and stand under majestic skies.  We'll dance in the salty spray of the Oregon coast and collect treasures to remember, etching visible and invisible marks, we were here.

But as for my little nomadic babies, where are they from and what does that mean?  I can show you where you were born, I'll point to the city and state on the map and say, that's where you began, the first moment we met you,  a light we were missing and never knew.  Tennessee on a hot October day. Minnesota, during a snowstorm in January, we borrowed my brother's jeep because our car was dead. North Carolina, it was hot and you've redeemed August forever.  

And more X's for the road map: Dancing under the stars in front of a red barn, in a town you'll never find, surrounded by our favorite people, the beginning of our family, X.  A dusty mountain in California, that's where I met him and fell deeply, hopelessly, for always, X.  On perfect Southern California beaches we painted sunsets and poked sea anemones, the XX. All these collected beginnings of our family, scattered on a wandering trail that we haven't stopped forging.  

that's not where we're from, you have no answer, but we do.

Your daddy is from Kansas, where the land stretches long under the sun and groans in fierce summer storms.  Where the tracks of life collect the people and there they tend to stay.  A place where you are oriented by family and the familiar, where time holds on and things remain.  His stories are rich with people and places we can still travel and see today. Steadfast and true, just like him.

My home was Michigan, where my childhood years were spent in deep, lovely forests and the sparkling blue waters. Everything was oriented to the water it seems- beach days, sailboat adventures, jumping in the waves, racing down giant sand dunes, canoeing in winding, shaded rivers-- wild and blissfully free. My life was full of constant change, places, homes, schools, change like oxygen, breathe in, breathe out, more change.   Change and water are my truths, it might be as simple as that.  

We make a good pair, the two of us.  Your dad, although he's steadfast and true, he carries the heart of a wandering dreamer, fiercely matching mine, but his gentleness can stabilize us into reality. My little chickens, do you hear our conversations?  The ones where we linger over dinner in the kitchen, with wistful eyes and restless air, the conversations full of dreams beckoning us to go forth and taste the earth.  Do you see our joy, right here in this place of today? Do you understand that both can exist without chaos?  I wonder if many do.

Do you wonder, my darlings? Can you feel a loss for not belonging under a solitary pushpin on a map.  Your first and second and third homes are expired locations, where new people live and other families grow.  Are your lives just collected pieces of all the places we go? Do you find this beautiful?  Are you safe in love and therefore, safe entirely.  Your first steps and sweet baby cries happened in a set of walls in a certain house, but we've wrapped them for safe keeping and they belong to no street.  They belong in the winding words of the unfolding tale of you.  They are ours and belong no other place than where we are.  I carry your heart with me, e.e. cummings wrote, I carry you in my heart.  Is that what he meant, that walls are just walls, but we are the carriers of time and space and love.  We are the stardust of yesterday, the light rays of tomorrow, stories within a story with no end.

Today you said, I'm from America.  You can point to a map and say, that's where I was born and this is where we live, but you're disconnected enough to know, that's not you.  

May I suggest, that places are just places and I know will tell you exactly where you are from. You are from love- love that crosses mountains and fills oceans. You are from true, beautiful love that is strong enough to look reality in the face and keep dreaming. You are from idealistic, restless souls holding on to faith, when everything sparkles and when the shadows linger.  You are from truth that God is good and gracious and with us. You are from the certainty that the world is full of beauty, so wildly beyond us and we are included in that "wildly beyond." We are a part of the wonder, the mystery, the light. You are from hope-filled dreams, long and winding, some unfolded and some yet forming.  And if you never belong anywhere at all, these things will transcend any bit of mortal dusty earth. 

So, I won't deposit unnecessary insecurities or lingering sad looks as I watch you grow far from houses once familiar.  I promise to take your hand and run with reckless abandon in the the beautiful world that is our home. I promise to tell you all these things that I know are true. I will roar from tall jagged cliffs and into crashing waves that we are alive on this land.  I will whisper in your ear, that you are wild, free, beautiful and brave.  So mark spots on the map and rest easily in arms of love, my small band of sojourners. Your X's have just begun.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in

my heart)i am never without it(anywhere

i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done

by only me is your doing,my darling)

                                                      i fear

no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want

no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) - e.e. cummings