Last August, I visited you with my partner. It wasn’t until we started dating in college that I realized he and I grew up ten minutes away from each other. It was four days of peace—I can’t remember ever going home and not feeling like I had to defuse a bomb that I knew would detonate no matter what I did.
My partner’s family invited me to stay with them, and there lies the difference—I spent my whole time with them and not with my own family. On some level, I felt like a tourist in a low-key destination. No grand plans, just bike rides, s’mores, hikes, and teaching a puppy new tricks.
There was an element to the place that struck me as foreign, even if I had grown up there. Place names sounded off to me even though I had gone to all these same spots as a child. A bizarre comfort that didn’t draw attention to itself when his parents talked about which roads to avoid after a recent storm, the lake and the trees all looking just a bit alien when gliding past them on a bike even when I had spent another lifetime staring at them mindlessly from behind a car window.
His childhood homes were so serene and familiar and lived-in and infused with happy memories. Here were the bedroom shelves of karate trophies and plush toys, here were the Yankee Candles and themed calendars, here were the large-screen TVs and sectional sofas positioned carefully for when Thanksgiving rolled around and everyone wanted to watch the game. It had been months since he had last visited, but it was instinctual to my partner where the mugs were kept, where I could find the serving spoons from the dinner ones. We spent our penultimate night watching Pixar’s Up and Disney’s Treasure Planet, an impromptu double feature that made me feel ten years younger. This was home. You were home, Bucks County, but only for one of us.
Cinematic parallels: John Silver choosing between Flint’s trove or saving Jim in Walt Disney Feature Animation’s Treasure Planet (2002) and Carl Fredricksen choosing between saving Kevin or his house in Pixar Animation Studio’s Up (2009).
We moved to a new apartment at the end of the summer and have been here for nearly two months. Sometimes we still pull the cabinets open from the wrong, hinged side. There are more bare walls than decorated ones. We have yet to find the time and energy to take our step ladder and check how many of our blankets can fit in our overhead linen closet.
After spending the previous five months of quarantine sharing the same cramped studio space with one always in the other’s field of vision, it took several days to shake off the strangeness of existing in separate rooms.
“Can I join you?” was a common question we asked each other when we felt too lonely reading or working in one room without the presence of the other.
I wonder if home will always carry an element of unfamiliarity to me.
I’ve been so quick to decorate our new apartment piece by piece, forcing a home to come together so the walls wouldn’t look so uninviting, the ceiling foreboding and far away. It’s the first place I’ve lived and can call my own in which there are no points of tension or discomfort or painful history. My family has never set foot in it.
Bucks County, last August was the first time I did not feel trapped inside you, and it was still not enough to make me feel safe to call you home.
My partner spent the first couple weeks here watching me pace from the front door, through our kitchen, to the living room. He asked why it mattered so much to me that the sight that greets us when we walk in is a peaceful one. Despite the several interior design tips I could have quoted, I had no answer for him. I am still trying to figure out what makes a home.
Take care,
Monique