Home Again - By Sharon Flood Kasenberg

Home Town:

Reconciling past and present
I revisit my hometown -
all is different, yet familiar
in the scenery around.
I scan faces to catch glimpses
of someone I might've known,
but it's hard to tell for certain
now that everyone has grown.
Buildings that seemed vast and looming
are now curiously small -
I'm amused, abashed and saddened
by the things that I recall.
I have knowledge, years and mileage
that divide me from this place
but at times I still feel drawn here -
there are things time can't erase.
From my memories I'm molded.
as I face today's concerns,
to the past I am beholden -
through experience one learns.

By Sharon Flood Kasenberg - September '08

Thirty-three years, two townhouses, two basement bedrooms, three houses and eleven apartments ago I moved out of my family home in Sault Ste. Marie. It was a smallish house for nine people - especially when the fact that my grandmother occupied the entire second story except for one bedroom is considered. Crowded or not I had a happy childhood there.

Even the yard of that house holds countless memories. It was huge by urban standards, and because we had a playhouse and a swing (which my father built out of a downed hydro pole), we were a destination location for most of the neighborhood kids. My brother built two pairs of stilts the summer I was thirteen, and we traversed that yard from considerable heights for several weeks, until we each got brave enough to demonstrate our skills on the sidewalk. We played games and had picnics in that yard. Once some friends of my sister, who had a band, entertained a group of neighborhood kids by performing in our backyard - a free mini concert for the neighborhood.

My childhood home evokes a lot of mental images - my mother rolling out a pie crust on the kitchen table, my grandmother doing crossword puzzles in her rocking chair; my father asleep on the couch. In my mind's eye I can see siblings reading and arguing and passing the popcorn bowl lap to lap while watching television. I remember the day my baby brother came home for the first time, bringing the sibling count to six. I remember shedding tears as each of my older sisters, and my older brother left home. That house saw a lot of beginnings and endings of one sort or another. It was a place that hosted parties populated by people of all ages. Our friends were always welcome there. It was a place that was filled with smells - cinnamon rolls, Sunday roasts and burnt toast. (My grandmother didn't think it qualified as toast unless a little singed.) Home was the sound of records playing on the stereo, the sound of my father singing off-key, feet running up and down the stairs - and doors slamming when our frequent squabbles began to get out of hand.

When I left my family home I knew I'd never live there again. My first apartment, an attic I shared in East London, became my first home away from home. Visits to the Soo were infrequent on my starving student budget, and although I missed friends and family there I was intent on building my own little nest. The first time I returned after a visit with my parents I ran up the rickety back steps, opened the door, and hollered to my room-mate, "I'm home!" - and I knew I was.

Home, I've learned, is a fluid concept. We carry it with us through all of our comings and goings. Home is made of memories of sounds and smells and snapshots that exist only in the brain. Home is made of experiences we collect along the way, wherever we happen to be living at the time. Home is where we unwind - where we take our deepest thoughts out for careful examination, and take out our frustrations so that we can be on our best behaviour elsewhere. Home is shelter from the storm - a safe haven in an often perilous world. Home is where we hang our hats, let down our hair and put up our feet. Our truest selves emerge when we are at home.

Every place I've ever lived, no matter how humble, played a part in my development. Every one of those places holds memories. The nasty townhouse with the sloping floors was where we brought our second son home, where my eldest learned the word "brother" and my youngest took his first steps. Home is a backdrop for growth. While my sons learned to walk and talk in those modest surroundings, I learned how to become a mother. While we lived in our last house, my husband and sons learned to swim in the above ground pool in its backyard. Those afternoons and evenings in the water, combined with the squeaky screen door and huge two sided fireplace inside, gave that house a perpetually cottage-y feeling that helped us feel cozily cocooned during an unhappy period in our family's history.

I find it difficult to visit my old homes. For many years, trips to the Soo were disconcerting. I slipped into my "former self" with too much ease. It always felt like I was putting on a comfortable old pair of jeans, only to realize that the seat was out. I felt oddly exposed on those visits - like any progress I might've made along the way had suddenly evaporated. I magically morphed back into an earlier incarnation of myself, and I didn't want to be her at all.

I've learned that all of my old homes are haunted by her - the Ghost of Sharon Past. She is still out there, walking on stilts in a front yard in Sault Ste Marie, looking out the window of that scuzzy townhouse in London - waiting for the rain to stop so she can put her boys in the wagon and escape those walls for a bit. She still proudly sweeps the hard wood floors in a house in Lively, and still splashes in a pool somewhere in St. Lazare. I've seen her walking the streets of East London - sometimes pushing a baby buggy. Although she is always in my head, I must admit that the sightings discombobulate me a bit.

The metaphysical sightings are bad enough, but the things my physical eyes behold when I drive past former homes are plenty disturbing on their own. New owners of my husband and I's first house painted the foundation and front walk poo green (ugh!), and new owners of our second home "de-cottaged" a house that oozed country charm by painting all the woodwork white and installing stainless steel appliances. (I saw the listing when I was scouting my old neighborhood on mls.ca and I almost cried.) I've learned that I don't like to see my former homes change, and that it feels like a personal affront when my mark on a place has been erased.

Perhaps I always knew that I would have an issue with looking at old homes through my change-resistant eyes. When I was eighteen years old my English teacher challenged us to each write a poem that imitated the style of a famous Canadian poet. I don't remember who I was trying to emulate, but this is what I wrote:

Revisitation:

This is my house.
I was born here.
Why then, do these new inhabitants
gaze at me through windows tightly closed?
Are they afraid of the past -
of times we spent within these walls
where our smiles
and our tears
penetrated plaster and wood
and retreated to cracks and corners
where they yet remain?
(They must lack security,
living on borrowed ground -
but do they even know?)
This house will never be theirs
no matter how long they dwell within it,
for so do we.
Look what they've done! Character cannot
be changed from the surface.
THEY'VE COVERED MY STRIPES WITH
FLOWERS!
LOOK WHAT THEY'VE DONE! -
But it doesn't matter, I guess - or it shouldn't.
They live here now - and I somewhere else -
almost.

By Sharon Flood, October 1980

I thought of this poem a few nights ago as I was ruminating on the content of this blog post. I dug it out and read it to my husband.

"Wow", he said, "you sounded angry!"

"Kind of foreshadows the future, right? Remember the look on my face when we drove past the house in Lively?" I replied.

I told him how I wrote the poem while trying to imagine what it would feel like to look inside the only house I'd ever lived in up until that point, and see how it had changed. Younger me somehow knew I'd have a problem with the redecorating involved.

She was right - I might be able to do a drive by, but taking a tour to see all the changes wouldn't be a good idea. Even though I had yet to leave my first, she knew that I would be sentimental about my homes. Four years ago my husband drove me past my childhood home for the first time since my mother had sold it almost a decade before.

"Let's drive past the old house" my husband suggested.

"No thanks, I don't want to" I answered.

"I think you should - we don't know how long it'll be until we come back to the Soo. Aren't you curious?"

I was a bit curious, but mostly I was afraid of all the ghosts I might see. In spite of my lack of enthusiasm we rolled slowly past the house. I had a lump in my throat, and yes, a few tears escaped in spite of my best efforts at self control.

And there she was - still walking on stilts to try out new perspectives.

"Hop in" I invited her, opening my mind just a crack. "Lets go home."

Just Another Message in a Bottle - by Sharon Flood Kasenberg

Message: (Yes, In A Bottle!)

I was walking at the shoreline
plucking pebbles from the beach
when I saw a bottle bobbing
in the waves just out of reach,
so I waded to retrieve it
then removed the scroll inside -
read the message in confusion;
understanding was denied.
When I brought it to my father
hoping he would comprehend
all the numbers written on it
he said, "It appears our friend
sent coordinates to show us
where he cast this from his boat
and was curious to find out
just how far that it might float."

Sent a note with my location
so the sender could learn more
and could chart the distance traveled
before bottle washed to shore.
Never thought much more about it
'til the day I wrote this tale,
now I contemplate the message
and how far it had to sail.

Life's a message in a bottle,
it's a lesson in a book;
life is out there all around you
if you'll only take a look.
Life's the message we are sending
and the one that is returned,
each experience we're given
brings another lesson learned.

It was not what I expected -
no dramatic SOS.
I was kind of disappointed
as a child I must confess.
Now I've grown to understand the
way humanity behaves,
cryptic notes are sent in bottles
to be carried by the waves.
When my loneliness compels me
I reach out to the unknown -
I am living, breathing, moving -
tell me I am not alone.
My coordinates keep changing,
but I'll tell you where I've been,
then perhaps you'll come exploring
and you'll see what I have seen.

I'm the author stuffing bottles
and the reader who replies,
sending data to the unknown
when the notion might arise.
I'm invested in connecting
with the another who discerns
what intentions forged the message
by the feedback he returns.

Life's a message in a bottle
we don't always understand
and the lessons we are learning
aren't the ones that we had planned.
We are scrolls rolled up in bottles
then cast out upon a wave -
bound for diverse destinations
from the womb until the grave.

By Sharon Flood Kasenberg  (March 2008)

Many years ago I did find a message in a cigar tin on the shores of Lake Superior, and like the child in my poem brought the note to my father to decipher.  Then I sent off a short note to the enclosed address as requested. Needless to say I never got a reply. I can only surmise that the sender got as much information as he'd requested - he learned how far his message went, and didn't really care about who had received it.

Our lives are filled with bottled missives - cryptic messages sent out into cyberspace, by ourselves and others, some hard to decipher. Facebook appeals to the Drama Queen in each of us. Who hasn't sent out an "I feel crappy today and I want the whole world to know it!" status - or one that is deliberately obscure - a baited hook waiting for sympathetic takers. Often we are motivated solely by our own need for attention. We don't care who responds, as long as somebody does. Like the mariner who bottles a message up and casts it overboard, we are primarily concerned with "how far" the message will go, how may people will hit the "like" button or respond. Why is that?

Here's my theory:
We are lonely.

Social media allows us to pretend we're not. (See how many people responded? I'm no loser!) But truthfully, in an age where many people care more about the number of their Facebook friends than having meaningful conversations with any of them - and where many spend more time fiddling with their cell phones than attending to those they're with - we are all losers.

Sting touched on a very similar theme in his song Message in a Bottle.

"Just a castaway
an island lost at sea
Another lonely day
with no one here but me."

Later in the song, the conclusion is made that he's "not alone in being alone - a hundred billion castaways, looking for a home."

I live a fairly insular life. I like my days to be quietly spent enjoying my solitary pursuits - reading, writing, gardening, baking; taking long walks. But I experience moments of poignant clarity when I realize how much more gratifying my life would be if I invited more friends over to enjoy my garden, or shared more home-made cookies with this Oreo-laden world. I should be showing someone else the beautiful trail I just explored, or discussing the latest book I loved with some other avid reader. Like the rest of humanity I get far too caught up in my own "busy-ness". Sometimes weeks go by before I realize I haven't had an outing, or more shocking still, a conversation, with anyone other than my spouse, my kids or my mother in quite a while.

When struck by this realization I feel lonely. It's partly my own fault. I'm reserved and a bit socially awkward. Getting to know new people doesn't come easily, thus it's easier to let the other person ask  questions. As uncomfortable as it makes me to admit it, I know that this behavior might make me seem disinterested in others when in fact I'm usually quite curious. Unfamiliar social territory has been made more difficult to navigate by the fact that I often become careless about interacting with my siblings and closest friends. They are busier than I am and probably don't have time to talk or get together, is what I tell myself to excuse my failure to do my share of reaching out.

The part that I'm not responsible for is purely circumstantial. I've moved around, and those who have never moved to another city simply don't realize how difficult it is to establish new friendships in middle age.  My kids are grown, so I have no involvement with their friends' parents at this stage of life. The other factor is that while I'm not alone in being alone, I think I might be in the minority when it comes to admitting that I'm lonely at times.

A lot of people see their mobile devices as a great source of connection. I don't. (Which is why I seldom carry my cell phone - but that's a whole other post.) Even telephone conversations require too much effort for most, and have been substituted with a series of text massages. We are a socially lazy generation - too easily lured into the social media trap where we have limited and mostly banal interactions with the masses instead of genuine (face to face!) interactions with people we actually know and claim to care about.

Some protest too strenuously that their lives are filled with socializing. They'll tell you that they eat lunch with "friends" every work day when in fact they merely share lunch with co-workers, which isn't the same at all. Or they'll tell you all about some church assignment or club they belong to that essentially forces them to sit in meetings and on committees with those whose company they'll enjoy for the period of time that they share common responsibilities. This kind of enforced interaction is no substitute for honest-to-goodness "come over to my house and hang out" sociability.

I am one of those castaways looking for a home, a community. That's why I make repeated efforts to tell the world how I feel, where I am and where I hope to go. But unlike a true narcissist, I hold out hope that I'll get responses and make connections. Every post is another message, and my computer is the vessel I use to send it out on the waves - I still believe that the media, in and of itself, is not the message.

"I am living, breathing, moving - tell me I am not alone."

Recently I had a Facebook friend announce that he would soon be deactivating his account. He said that while he enjoyed his online interactions, he wanted more experiences and less entertainment. I can relate to his sentiments. I've often wondered if I sent out an invitation for a night of "real time face time" at my home to forty or fifty people who I know well (or would like to get to know better), how many would take me up on the offer? How many would fore-go a night of texting with the many or scrolling their news feed in favor of mingling with the few? How many would be willing to sever their cell phone connection for an hour or two - or better yet leave their phone at home? (Those would be the rules - no mobile devices - after all I do have a land line in case of emergencies.)

Are you one of the hundred billion bottles looking for a home? Are you ready to send out an SOS?

I think I am.