HomePlace
As the little green sign under the hemlock says, "HeresHome". In a sense, the whole story of our lives is about arriving in just this place in all the world. The house is the first home we've lived in since 1987 that we don't plan to leave in a few years. The story in Fragments is about being here. As lives go, ours are not so special, but our stories are one-of-a-kind and we are the only ones who can tell them, just as you own your stories and perhaps share them in your own way. Keeping a weblog certainly makes the sharing easy, doesn't it?
One of the nicest things I've heard in my short life of publicly-accessible weblog writing was the reader-visitor who drove up to the house for the first time and said "It's just like you've described it. I feel as if I'm coming home." It has been gratifying to share the details of our ordinary lives with visitors from all over the world.
This may be the last picture of the snow you'll see for a while. But I can pretty well say for sure in the months ahead you will see more pictures of home-- the creek, the barn, the garden, the pasture, the forest, the ridges, the dog-- because there's more to home than house. But every once in a while, when the lighting is good and it looks especially, well, homey, I'll snap one of the house itself. For our scrapbook.
Comments
"... our stories are one-of-a-kind and we are the only ones who can tell them." Fred, I agree 1000%. Yet there are many stories that never get told. I was giving a reading from my family/farm memoir, Curlew:Home, at a bookstore in Minnesota a few years ago. I read for about 45 minutes to an audience of what - twelve people. About ten minutes into the reading, one of the women front and center started crying. She cried for the rest of the reading. At the end, as we had coffee and cookies, she apologized: "I was just thinking of all the stories in my family that have been lost. All the people who know them are now dead...." So, yeah, write yours; get yourself a tape recorder and get the stories that are about to be lost: the WWII generation is about five years away from being entirely gone. We need to do it now!
Posted by: Tom Montag | February 20, 2004 8:07 AM
Home IS Home and "homey"! That IS why I blog... not for the visitors so much looking in (which is nice) but for the changes that occur around it. Like a beautiful handmade quilt that gets more tattered and comfortable as the years go on. Heartfelt "funny, touching" reflections that are able to be touched on again, in a substantial way. Ya never know what it is like to log like this about home until you do. YOU do it in a gentle, special, unforgettable way.
Did ya know YOU are an inspiration? :-)
Posted by: Sallie | February 20, 2004 10:24 AM
This image really captures the feeling of home, that it's more than just a house. Great pic. And if you don't treat them hemlocks, I'll come up and do it for ya.
Posted by: fletch | February 20, 2004 1:45 PM
Sallie's right. You are.
I guess one reason I appreciate the stories you, Tom Montag and others tell is that after my dad died when I was 12 and my mother essentially lost her mind, she threw away or lost most of the family photos, and her memories got fairly well lost, as well. Grandparents were gone, too.These seemingly ordinary tales of your home, dog, garden, and so on, put your watermark on time itself and bookmarks in my heart. I love the detail.
Posted by: Beth W. | February 20, 2004 1:56 PM
Fred, all lives are special -- not only for those who live them but also for everyone they affect. That's what makes human interaction so important.
Posted by: Doug | February 20, 2004 6:26 PM
One of the things that draws me to your particular brand of storytelling is that you are clearly removed from the frantic always-in-a-hurry life that so many of us lead. Your stories are about the treasures found in every day living and nature; however, we're usually so busy flitting from thing to thing that we miss these things totally. Your voice slows the world down and sharpens the focus on the mundane or ordinary, but your beautifully eloquent delivery raises the ordinary to absolute perfection. You give us a corner of the world that is calm and serene (okay, most of the time), yet still vibrant with character.
Maybe character is the key, from my angle. I love every inch of home from your viewpoint, even when it is sliding down an ice-slick driveway just inches from total peril. You bring textures and colors to things that are invisible to me, and I love being given the privilege of seeing what you see. Thank you for your taste of home. I'm rather fond of your little corner of the world.
Posted by: ntexas99 | February 20, 2004 8:00 PM
"...removed from the frantic...." was just what I felt, today, watching the movie "Sounder". It depicts, so well, the timelessness of my childhood and depicted the lives of those even more crushed by povety than we were. As the "interminable" scene of Nathan's homecoming ground on, I was a bit annoyed that it stretched on and on. Then, I did a double-take and wondered if this sense of the stretching out of minutes wasn't something that I missed from my childhood. The next question was: Is this what I want to find in my retirement? Good question.
Posted by: Cop Car | February 22, 2004 5:21 AM