where I'm from (2)

When I was little (we were in Japan, so 4, maybe?), I had an imaginary friend, Mary Ellen. Mary Ellen was a little girl like me. Mary Ellen had a father, Mr. Mary Ellen. Yeah ok, that part is confusing, but I was 4. Mr. Mary Ellen was in the Navy (like my dad) and he flew planes (like my dad) but his planes could also fly under water (cool!). And when Mr. Mary Ellen wanted to stay home with Mary Ellen, he could temporarily take a desk job, stuffing envelopes.

I was totally the kind of 4-year-old whose vocabulary included "stuffing envelopes." I must have been exhausting.

Of course I don't remember any of this - it's my mother's story, accompanied by a heavy dose of guilt that her beloved daughter was forced to imagine friends and a father who could stay home. But I don't think Mary Ellen was a sign of deprivation so much as a creative solution - she and her, um, "father" were as real as I needed them to be. Had I been more of an extrovert, I think life as a Navy brat could have been far more traumatic, but as it was I was pretty oblivious and mostly content.

But still, as an adult, "where am I from?" is a question I've struggled with quite a bit, not least because I have my own parental guilt around not being able to give my own children a "home" when I'm not sure where my own is. But I had something of an epiphany about this the other day.

It started in my GCL group when someone read a poem about "home." My first thought was oh, home, that's a difficult concept... Then I thought, well, what would home look like? And what came to mind was an apartment in New York (I think I had New York on the brain because I read Umbrella to the kids at church last week...SUCH a great book) with high ceilings and shelves of books and comfy chairs, everything well-loved and tidy. Not my apartment, but one I have a key to, where I can show up, any time. A man lives there, a good friend, a father figure but not my father. He's older and wiser and he has a beard and also some kind of interesting career, but whatever that is he can put it on hold when I come. He's happy to see me and makes me a cup of tea and I curl up in a big chair in front of a warm fire and fall asleep. And when I wake up he's there with something yummy to eat, and we talk for a long time, and maybe eventually leave the apartment and go explore the city. I don't have any responsibilities other than to rest and enjoy myself. Eventually, I'll say goodbye and go back to real life the kids and the to-do list and the f-ing laundry. But Mr. Mary Ellen (I think we can safely call him that?) will always be there...

None of this exists, of course, but I got such a lovely warm feeling just from imagining it! And then I realized that the same lovely warm feeling is something I absolutely have in my life, just...not all in one place. I have it when I see my brother or my college friends and we get to talk late into the night. I had it when we were at my parents' house and the kids were occupied I had time to sit down and read a whole book(!). Actually I also have it pretty much any time I get to stay overnight by myself in a hotel room. You might well note that these are all situations in which I get to drop the fraught (for me, anyway) title of "mommy," but I even have it here in Zurich sometimes, in our sweet light-filled apartment, particularly in our new bed, recently upgraded from the old full-sized mattress to a euro-style two-single-mattresses affair big enough for the whole family to cuddle in.

Somehow all that, taken together, is home. It doesn't lend itself to an easy answer to the question of where I'm from, but still, it's very comforting to know that it's here somewhere.