THE ACHE FOR HOME<\/p>\n
Our two-story wooden cottage in Old Orchard Beach, Maine,
with the extended front porch, a dozen rocking chairs and a whitewashed fence,had a soul. Houses with names often do, particularly old ones. The Tide Rock\u00a0House had a soul as ancient as the icy sea water that washed against the\u00a0shoreline several hundred yards from the end of the street. The living room had\u00a0an out of tune piano and a roll top desk and the iceman came every three days
to deliver huge blocks of ice for the refrigerator on the porch.<\/p>\n
We went there every summer when I was a child, and I loved
climbing on the rocks by the ocean and poking my small fingers into the sudsy\u00a0tide pools. I upset small fishes, miniature crabs with transparent legs, shell\u00a0chips and seaweed strands, all scattered amid colorful pieces of broken plastic\u00a0and the occasional used condom that I mistook for jellyfish body parts. I gathered\u00a0shell specimens, washed off the sand, and placed them on top of my wooden\u00a0dresser.<\/p>\n
One time, a tiny crab crawled out of a shell, scrambled the
length of the creaky old dresser, scaled down the side and imbedded itself in a\u00a0crack between two stuck drawers. I watched for a moment, got distracted and\u00a0forgot about it until the next day. When I went back to search for it, the crab\u00a0was gone. I like to think the house protected it until no one was around and\u00a0then somehow helped it get away. It could have happened; the Tide Rock House\u00a0was like that. A home with a soul that could never die.<\/p>\n
Home became a lot less solid as I grew up. I spent my\u00a0teenage life on the road, touring with a ballet company and living in hotels, and
I imagined a home that was all mine, filled with beautiful things that meant\u00a0the world to me. I was once at a gala ballet reception at Lincoln Center where\u00a0I heard a girl say quite casually, \u201cI feel at home everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don’t feel at home anywhere,\u201d I told her. But now I do.
My current home couldn’t be more different than my childhood haunt, but like\u00a0the Tide Rock House, it has a soul and a name. I call it \u201cThe Sanctuary\u201d and it\u00a0constantly lives up to my expectations. It greets me when I come home, it lulls\u00a0me when I\u2019m anxious, it warms and cools me when the weather is intemperate and\u00a0it keeps me safe when I feel afraid. In the night, when all is quiet and my\u00a0cat, Star, is resting beside me, I can almost hear a deep hum of contentment as
if my home is singing me a lullaby. Like a mother might do.<\/p>\n
Home is what we make it. It doesn’t matter if it\u2019s sprawling
or tiny. It doesn\u2019t matter if if it has an Electrolux range or a two burner\u00a0stove top from Home Depot. A sub zero refrigerator with an icemaker or a\u00a0mini-fridge with no freezer. Home has nothing to do with square footage or the\u00a0number of rooms. It has everything to do with how we think about it, how we\u00a0take care of it and the things with which we surround ourselves. If we give our\u00a0home a heart and soul, if we fill it with beauty and kindness, it will reward\u00a0us with acceptance and safety.<\/p>\n
Maya Angelou said, \u201cThe ache for home lives in all of us,
the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.\u201d<\/p>\n
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THE ACHE FOR HOME Our two-story wooden cottage in Old Orchard Beach, Maine,with the extended front porch, a dozen rocking chairs and a whitewashed fence,had a soul. Houses with names often do, particularly old ones. The Tide Rock\u00a0House had a soul as ancient as the icy sea water that washed against the\u00a0shoreline several hundred yards […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":1912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}