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."