A Life of Moving Gives Proof There’s No Place Like Home

Recently, I dreamed I was struggling barefoot in the snow through an obstacle course of barbed wire, rusted dried-blood red. This dream might sound like a nightmare, but it wasn’t because in it I knew I was running toward life, toward the house my great-grandfather built in 1910 and in which my grandmother lived for 40 years.

Because my father served in the military, I grew up in transit. I didn’t have a “home town,” and at the time, I didn’t feel I needed one. I enjoyed seeing new places and making new friends. It wasn’t until my 20s that I realized something was missing in my life, a spot, a physical location from which I could draw strength, a “power place.”

Then, in a series of dreams, it became obvious my grandmother’s house was that place. Throughout all the moving, it had been, during Christmas and during visits, the one constant location in my life.

And it was not just the house, but a room that “grounded” me, tied me to a place and a family history. This was the living room with its 12-foot ceiling and a fireplace which before gas heaters made the room the warmest in the house. The Christmas tree was always set up in this room, usually a 7-foot spruce that my grandmother cut and hauled to the house by herself. She cut these trees on the Texas land which our family had owned for more than 140 years. In this room, my great-grandfather suffered a fatal stroke. At the time, his brother, Parke, lived with him. When the body was laid out, a neighbor attending to the details took the wrong dentures from the wrong glass. Parke never wore false teeth again.

In this same room, as a 4-year-old, I huddled behind a couch while a tornado struck the farm, blowing away the barn, but sparing the house. I remember my grandmother opening all the windows on the northeast side of the house, and then standing resolutely by me until the storm had passed. In this room, too, my grandmother nursed at different times members of her family who convalesced on a Pepto-Bismol pink sofa: her sister after an eye operation, a daughter after a car accident, a son during periodic nervous breakdowns, and me with the Hong Kong flu. Finally, from a hospital bed in this room, my grandmother at the age of 83 refused to give in to death and successfully fought her way back from a series of strokes.

It is only since growing up that I realize the importance of the security of place. For 23 years, I have suffered separation anxiety, and I am convinced that a sense of belonging to a physical location helps in the necessary separation between parent and child. A sense of place, of belonging gives a feeling of confidence. In my case, my sense of safety came totally from my parents. I felt they were the only constants in my life--my only sure home. Had I had a physical place from which to draw security, I believe the separation from my parents would have been easier.

My first memories are of traveling in the dark, either early in the morning or late at night. This was before the days of motel chains spanning the continent, offering advance registration. I remember the anxiety of wondering whether or not we would have a place to sleep that night. As a 3-year-old, I feared I might be left by accident, abandoned in a strange place. Nineteen years later, just out of college in the early ‘70s, I went to England with two friends who had spent their childhoods in one spot. They were relaxed about where they would spend the night. The prospect of sleeping on a park bench didn’t faze them. I, on the other hand, had to know exactly where I would be sleeping, so while they enjoyed Westminster Abbey and Hampton Court, I had a tension headache.

There is another emotional aspect involved in growing up in one spot. In my nomadic childhood, I always felt I could move away from unpleasant memories or feelings. I didn’t learn until I was 30 that feelings can be faced, lived with and eventually worked through, that a place need not be tainted forever with fear or sadness.

I identified easily with the scene in “The Great Santini” where the kids begin yet again another school. Because my family moved so much, I became quite good at making friends. Necessity meant I had to make the first overtures. Unfortunately, another coping mechanism I developed prevented me from keeping these friends. After moving, the only way I could accept the loss of my friends was to totally cut my ties with them. I didn’t write or think about them, but simply moved on to a new life. The only ongoing friendships I had were with other military children also on the move.

Actually, I was lucky. We changed locations often, but my school year was disrupted only once in the last months of the fifth grade. One of my friends, whose father was a Marine, also moved constantly, and these disruptions were disastrous to her education. She is now adamant that her children will grow up in one house, in one town.

I agree with her. From my own experience, I firmly believe good parenting means that, as well as providing our children with food, clothes and education, we should endow them with a sense of place, a safe spot from which they can ultimately launch themselves into the adult world, and from which they can draw spiritual strength even years afterward.