It had become a habit, gazing across the plain. For hours she would stand willing her eyes to see what she most hoped to find, a figure running to her out of the prairie’s haze, that foolish little dog scampering at her side. Emily, always so driven by farm work and duty, had lost all sense of purpose. The twister had swept it away along with the child. But time passes and the damage is set aright, at least the damage you can see. The farmhouse and the chicken coop stood repaired finer than new and for Em, almost by magic, because it had happened around her as she waited and watched the desolate landscape. If only she could change the things she had said. If only she had been mindful of what was truly important. Then Dorothy would still be filling the empty spaces with her laughter and this place, where Em had come as a bride and toiled away her youth, would still feel like home. Inspired by “The Wizard of Oz—Chapters 23 & 24”, by L. Frank Baum.
Thoughts of home collect like frost on the window panes this time of year. And though I try to keep my eyes focused on the here and now, the patterns and swirls of Decembers long past fill my vision, leaving me peering at the present through a veil of memories. Here shivers an angel in the nativity play clothed in a threadbare white gown and a prickly halo, breathing in the aromas of popcorn and cedar. There lingers an adolescent staring into the velvety darkness of a too silent night, the Christmas tree and her face reflected on the cold glass. Up in the corner a teenager smooths her party dress as she waits for the current love of her life. Near the sill a young mother kneels amid a pile of crumpled paper, smashed bows and two giggling boys. And everywhere the faces of loved ones, smiling or stern, appear briefly in the rime before the warmth of my breath melts them away.
The holidays for me, as for many, are bittersweet. Each year I find myself struggling to reconcile the memories that comfort me with those that still cause me pain. How is it, I wonder, that I repeatedly come to the same conflicted state, wanting to dive into the festivities with both feet, but afraid of what such an immersion might mean. And as I fret about dipping my toe in the seasonal tide, a great wave of melancholy washes over me, leaving me struggling to stay afloat and I suspect that the recollections I cling to for salvation are the same remembrances that are pulling me down. As counterintuitive as it may seem, I sense now is the moment to let them go. For in my desire to recreate home in the image of my past experiences, I fail to appreciate the home that is already here. How lucky that this year a simple moment of shared joy reminded me of the beauty of the place where I am.
There comes that time at Thanksgiving dinner when the plates are empty and the cutlery lays silent and those gathered at the table bask in that pause before dessert. Into this quiet I reminisced about my mother’s dinners and admitted that next to her gold standard of holiday meals mine felt a little like pyrite. My family offered me assurances about my cooking and the meal we had just enjoyed, even though I wondered if the words reflected their love and kindness more than the quality of the food. It seemed the perfect moment for dessert and my son presented his three-year-old daughter with her first ever slice of pumpkin pie. To say she was transported by the experience would not be an overstatement. She squealed with her first bite and relished each bite after with an enthusiasm that delighted the rest of us. See, my children told me, here is someone who will remember her grandmother’s dinners as being the ultimate of holiday dining.
So this Christmas when the memories, good and bad, started flooding back, I tried to welcome them, but not let them dictate my expectations for the season. Just as Dorothy will return to a new farmhouse and Auntie Em will welcome back a child made new by her experiences, we have to honor what was, but embrace what is. As the movie-Dorothy reminds us, “There’s no place like home.” For home never exists in the past, but always in the present. It is that place you cannot map for it resides in the heart and though it might spend years in close association with one set of walls, or one kind of holiday, it is sure to travel, to migrate, to change in ways we cannot imagine, but its appearance will surprise us when we least expect it and we will find that home is always waiting right where we are.
Wishing you blessings and joy in the coming New Year!
Being Dorothy 