There's nothing half so pleasant as coming home again.”
Margaret Elizabeth Sangster
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| Never my house, but a place I always felt at home. My father's cousin, much beloved, celebrated her 100th birthday here. |
“As of the end of 2014, 38 million people around the world had been forced to flee their homes by conflict and violence. Never in the last 10 years of (the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre’s) global reporting, have we reported such a high estimate for the number of people newly displaced in a year. “
I found this figure so stupefyingly tragic that it literally sucked my breath away. These are internally displaced people -- meaning that it does not include all those who are now refugees in other countries -- such as the 4 million plus Syrian refugees now living in mostly 5 host countries, to name the currently largest heartbreaking example. OR the millions more displaced by natural catastrophes. And, because of my own background as a biologist working to conserve ecological communities -- I also think of the of all the creatures, plant and animal, that are also displaced not only by these disasters, but by the relentless destruction that human “progress” visits upon them every single day. What does all of this displacement do to us collectively?
This detour in my self-examination is not to dwell on these staggering statistics of sadness - these are available to anyone with the luck and fortitude to find a reliable source of news these days -- but rather to think more deeply about what is “displacement”, and what is “home”, why are these integral concepts to our lives, and and how do I reconcile with them my life and actions every day. I have been feeling displaced lately -- displaced from our house, our “things”, our hobbies and work, our garden, our routines, our neighbors, our peaceful quiet refuge. Our displacement is approaching 4 months and the end is not yet in sight. It’s a genuine feeling that I am experiencing, no matter how our circumstances pale in comparison to all that real suffering in the world -- and all I can do with it is to allow myself to feel it, examine it, and to place that feeling in perspective and empathy for others where it belongs.
I start by trying to define my terms (as a good technical writer must): - once you start trying to define these concepts, you can get lost for a very long time in the complexities of their meanings. Here is my attempt to whittle it down, with some links if you want more:
Home: -- the place or a place where one lives: have you no home to go to? Wow -- that’s about as basic as it gets. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/home
Displacement -- the displacing in space of one mass by another (a physics definition -- but replace the word “mass” with that of your choosing....)
And...here are my personal definitions
Home: -- the place to which I feel rooted - and can feel authentic, safe, and nurtured (this sometimes involves p.jays and old tee shirts).
Displacement - the state of being away from home involuntarily.
Obviously it is all so much more complex than that. In my meanderings on the internet the quotes that resonated most with me regarding home were attributed to the remarkable people below:
“The ache for home lives in all of us - the safe place we can go as we are and not be questioned”
Maya Angelou
“If you go anywhere, even Paradise, you will miss your home”
Malala Yousafzai
“It may be that the satisfaction I need depends on my going away, so that when I’ve gone and come back, I’ll find it at home”
Rumi
Here’s a whole bunch more about what home means to people...
And here's a few photographic examples of homes that some of the creatures who share our local habitat have found...adaptability is the lesson we learn from them:
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| Honeybees sleep in the Sacred Datura |
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| And in the sunflowers... |
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| The Say's phoebes nest on our front eaves annually - here's the first youngster |
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| A western toad found our flowerpots at Cimino a welcoming home |
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| Sergio, a western screech owl, enjoyed our next box for several years.... |
And one or two from travels I can't resist:
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| An arrow crab finds this sponge at 60 feet below the surface in the Cayman Islands a perfect home |
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| White storks share the steeples of homes in Transylvania -- good luck for all! |
A few examples of adaptation due to voluntary displacement by our fellow humans Gene and Gayle remodeling their home....
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| The multi-purpose room (guest room converted into office and dining room upstairs)
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| The upstairs "pantry" |
Why do this? To make it “better”, of course. But why? Gale and Gene are one of 2 (couples) of our close friends that have also embarked upon a remodel of this summer, and a third have bought an empty lot near us so they can uproot their entire quite happy lives, and move to another state and build another house. Why?
Gotta speak strictly for ourselves, here. Why indeed? Some people might legitimately question why are we “expanding” at this stage of our lives? We are retired, mostly. We have no children or grandchildren. Shouldn’t we be downsizing? What about all this small footprint/light on the environment ecobabble we espouse? Indeed, we have wrestled with these questions ourselves.
The simple answer here is because we are not who we were (a) while we were working regular jobs and (b) before we lived together. I lived for nine years as a veritable bio-gypsy -- following migratory birds from southeast Idaho to New Mexico -- with forays to the Northwest Territories of Canada in the summer and northern Mexico in most winters. My “home” at that time was a 15 foot camper trailer -- and all the beautiful wild spaces in which it traveled with the birds. After my divorce in 2003, I lived alone and worked very long hours -- I was rarely in my house. I lived in 709 square feet, one bedroom, a small patio, with my dog. I loved it, and it suited me perfectly then. Not much to take care of, but it had all the feelings I needed of “home” that I needed then. Seven years later, I began to need more space and light and I bought the house that Ed and I are now renovating. This house suited me perfectly in 2009, but after we married and I retired, we found that some modification was in order to meet the needs of us as a couple after we married.
I actually feel that I am expanding now. I want a space in which I can craft and nurture the different aspects of myself I’d like to explore as I enter my third stage of life. That will involve being at home far more than I was when I worked in an office. Writing, studying, learning to be a yoga teacher, more dancing, more entertaining, more gardening -- and who knows what else? Ed, who is a fine craftsman of stone, metal, and wood - wants to have a shop he can work in whenever he wants, rather than driving somewhere to do so. Of course, we could have made it all work with the status quo -- but have decided to modify our surroundings to better suit this next chapter of our lives. Critters do the same, you know.... Golden eagles, as one example, often return to the same nest site year after year, but will continue building upon it till it may reach six feet or more in depth. We look forward to the next steps in our journey (and oh yes we look forward to moving back home) and to sharing it with all of you!
