Finding Home
from the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine

Before I left for my first month of sleep- away camp, I had really never
been away from home before. I had stayed over-night at a friend’s and I
visited my father on weekends. But a month is a long time and home is a
funny word. Home is where your stuff is. Home is where your mom lives
and your sister and brother. Where you see the same dishes. Where your
sheets fit on the bed and your record collection stands on your shelves.

By the time I was eleven, I had already moved eight times and gone to
five different schools. I had lived in a variety of different family situations.
Home was something you carried with you. You had to know what was
yours and not lose it, pack it and protect it. You had to take it out again,
in order to enjoy it.

That summer of 1972, I was living in Shandaken, NY, with my step-mother
and her husband, Barry; my brother Stephen, and our half-sister, Anne.
(I reluctantly use “half-sister” only for clarification. We share not only a
father but a lifetime of history and loyalty and love.)

My room in our Shandaken house was very small. It was yellow with a
ceiling that slanted to the floor. It was the first time that I had a room to
myself and I loved it. My bed was tucked against one wall. The only other
piece of furniture that would fit was a bureau. On that bureau I had a pink
and white crocheted table runner. Inside were my clothes. Everything I had
collected in my ten years had to be kept in my sister’s room. There was a
little door in my room that led right into hers.

I had my albums (The Temptations, The Fifth Dimension, and Diana Ross.
I had The Original Cast album of Hair), my toys, my stuffed animals, gifts
from my grandmother, pictures. I had a small photo album -- all in my sister’s
room. And of course, my books. I didn’t have a large collection of books but
they were all very important to me. Especially, my three E.B White books.
And especially The Trumpet of the Swan which had been just published and
was a gift from my step-mother, Jean.

I had called Jean,” Mom” since I was four years old. Although ( I suppose)
I knew she was not my birth mother and I knew my mythical real mother
had died. That’s all I knew. Jean was my Mom. She had inscribed The Trumpet
of the Swan with these words.
May 1971
Happy Birthday
Love, Mom
(If I close my eyes, I can still see her large, neat handwriting.)

Even when I visited my father I would get homesick. I missed my bed, my
books, my toys, my sister. I missed home. But for some reason, which only
as an adult I can attempt to piece together, I was made to go to camp. Perhaps
Jean’s marriage to Barry (which ended that summer) was too overwhelming for
her. Perhaps it was money or middle-age or love, or all the things that as a
grown-up I contend with. But for me, at eleven years old, my month at camp
made me terribly homesick.

However, I did spent my time if not wisely then actively. I shaved my legs for the
first time, kissed a boy, and tie-dyed my bed sheets. I hitch-hiked in town and got
caught. (my punishment was to clean out the camp garbage cans ) and by the end
of the month I wanted nothing more than to share everything with my mother.

I couldn’t wait to tell her about the kiss. Show her my green and yellow sheets.
Show her my bald, sexy legs. She was supposed to come up to Vermont and pick
me up. But she didn’t come.

My dad did. I was going to live with him now, back in New Paltz, with my brother
who had already moved in, and my dad’s new wife. Everything from that point on
is a blur. My bed was there and my bureau with the pink and white crocheted table
runner spread nicely on top. But everything else- -my records, my pictures, my
stuffed animals , and all my books were gone. The only evidence I had of my
relationship with my mother was that inscription in The Trumpet of the Swan.
It was gone. And so was my sister, who, it was decided would stay living with
her mother. My dad didn’t know all my stuff was in the other room. He didn’t know.

I didn’t hear from Jean again. She didn’t return my letters. She didn’t respond to
the gifts I sent. A year later, she moved to California and my sister came to live
with us in New Paltz. I never asked Anne what happened to all my stuff. I just
started all over again. In a lot of ways. I began saving. Little boxes, wooden and
cloth. Pretty rocks, shells, old perfume bottles. Beads. My Bob Dylan/James Taylor/
Janis Ian/Joni Mitchell/Judy Collins and Woody Guthrie record collection. And
everything I had written from sixth grade on. Every journal, every test, every
notebook, almost every note passed. I saved all the short stories, short novels and
all the poetry- there was a lot of poetry. I saved everything all through high school
and college.

I carried all this stuff around with me with a ferocity unmatched. By the time I got
married I needed a U-haul truck. I had one chair, a bed, a stereo receiver and turn table,
a few dishes and a ten-speed. The rest was all boxes and boxes of stuff.

Now, I’m turning 40 and I still have most of it. But not all. Slowly I have been able to let
go because now I have something else. I have, not only a husband, but I have two children.

And I’m collecting again. The pink pig that my son, Sam sewed in Home Ec (they call
it Family and Consumer Science now) hangs above my bed. I have a flat purple ceramic
thing of unknown purpose in my bathroom, for now we keep nail clippers and tweezers
in it. Ben made that. I have a drawer so full of papers, tests, and book reports that
I can’t open it.

I’m not a pack rat. I save only the remarkable art work, of which there is plenty. I save
all reports cards. All mother’s and father’s day cards. Certainly every photograph. Every
newspaper clipping that mentions one of my boys. Letters, stories, poems, book reports.

I save all this stuff because a part of me doesn’t want to let go of this time while my
children are still young. Because I know-- as they don’t--that this time is going to go
by very quickly. Certainly, I want to save it, hold it, even halt it.

But mostly, I save all this stuff because I want to see it around me. I want to surround
myself with it. Some of it sits around the house, or is tacked to the walls, or stuck to the
refrigerator. Some of it , I have packed and protected, and from time to time I just enjoy.
I pull down the stairs, climb up into the attic and I sit cross-legged on the floor. I take out
the khaki Ghostbuster outfit that Sam insisted on wearing to nursery school. I don’t even
try to resist holding it up to my face. There are the pictures Ben drew, the stories he wrote.
There are two pair of teeny, tiny first sneakers. I don’t even know which belong to whom,
but it doesn’t matter. The shoes are so small and the memories are powerful that sometimes
I cry. Every time I cry.

But sometimes ( if nobody is home) I reach for a worn lop-sided box pushed far back against
the exposed pink insulation and the slanted roof. Now, I really settle down . I open the box.
I pour through the pages and pages of writing I did as a young girl. Things I wrote when I
was so yearning for a home, a place to keep everything where it would be safe. When I was
so lonely and confused. I can see the transformation. I can actually see all the drama and all
my dreams. And I really haven’t changed that much. But I know I have finally found what I
wanted. I am home.

Originally appeared in the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine on October 7, 2001

1. Just Hanukkah

2. Finding Home

3. On Writing for Children
and Children Writing

4. Art, Romance, Life, Howard Munce and Me

©2003, Nora Baskin