Where is home? Has
your mind drifted to a childhood image of safety and security, so beloved of
our Yorkshire friends? Someone from
Yorkshire can be living anywhere else in the world for most of their lives and
yet, somehow ‘home’ is where they are not.
Is this because Yorkshire grit requires its own to be constantly bearing
some hardship, and when all else fails not being in Yorkshire is the ultimate
hair shirt? I don’t mean to poke fun at
Yorkshire men and women (a behaviour akin to taking a stick to a lion as in
that lovely monologue of my youth ‘Albert and the Lion’) but it is something of
a stereotype, perhaps one we all accept as gospel. Home is childhood, a place to go back to.
Time to state the obvious: many of us don’t have that
idealised image. In thinking about
writing again, yes dear readers it has been a long time, I pondered about my shameful,
almost disinterested acceptance of news that hundreds of thousands of people
have had to flee their homes in Syria and now live in makeshift camps in
relative safety. I remember holidaying
in Lebanon in 1970 and, on the way into Beruit, passing mile upon mile of
Palestinian refugee camps, effectively shanty towns for the displaced
people. The thorny problem of the
Palestinian issue remains today, more than 40 years later, but those people
very probably still are nowhere they can call home. Have they made home where they are, or does
that grit irritate the scar tissue of the dispossessed?
I suppose I’m trying to put my own issues in context, for it
is true I am a fortunate and largely very content person these days. Since last I wrote my life has taken a very
different path, happiness has unexpectedly seeped in, a glow that, I’m told, is
there for all to see. Obviously, there
is a man involved, the New Man of previous posts, and, in addition, a new job
60 miles away in the city where he lives.
My job locally had long been, let’s call it ‘challenging’, and my New
Man had kindly pointed out that it was doing me no good. He was, of course, right, but as I had been
so relieved to have secured this first full time post since my children were
born, it was going to take a lot for me to move on. And deep down inside there was a feeling that
I may have reached as far as I could.
When I joined I was hopelessly out of date in my methods, okay I got
results, but I knew nothing of the TeacherSpeak imbued in trainees, my own
training being a lip service affair in the 1990s. Then there was the ‘full time’ part,
something I kept very quiet until I’d been in place a couple of years. I worked extremely hard not to show that I
was, in many respects, a beginner in teaching.
I wasn’t, of course, but I daren’t let myself feel that, and
that proved a very sensible path when the management changed and stringent
procedures were put in place to improve the standards overall. I learnt not to question, but to ‘hoop jump’,
partly because of the deep seated inadequacy I lived with, partly because
anyone who questioned the strategy was ‘dealt with’. The senior staff knew their stuff, they
assured us, and I just needed to put the work in. Whether the work required was actually going
to improve standards remains a moot point, but the amount of work meant I
missed my cousin’s wedding last September because I knew I couldn’t have not
worked one weekend, because then I would in all likelihood have failed an
observation, been put on a capability package and removed. It may seem shocking and indeed watching my
colleagues around me crumble with the pressure was not fun. And crumble they did and, perhaps predictably,
so did I. Eventually. However, I found,
which you may not find surprising, that I picked myself up and went back to
work, something a few of my colleagues never managed again, and got the job
done.
All through this difficult time the New Man was there. Not
cloying or challenging, just there, supporting me. He had already told me he thought it best I
change jobs for my own welfare, but it also became obvious that we wanted to be
together. I’m not sure how it was
arrived upon; if I’m honest, there was no great moment I can recall. I suppose
it came with a ‘finding a job near you’ conversation. He had looked at jobs near me for him and
nothing came up. I had an interview
about a year ago, which came to nothing, but did allow us to explore how it
could be managed, this togetherness.
Still, it remained hypothetical, and I returned to my home, my place.
As old friends will know, my move to this house came as a
result of the break-up of my marriage, but at the same time my father died and
therefore I lost my parents’ home as well.
I have written elsewhere about making this home and explored the feelings
of being alone in this operation. That
was the beginning, when I found myself challenged by the new identity forced
upon me: the divorced, now single, middle-aged woman of independent means. Creating my home has been something that has
given me enormous comfort, and I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. Indeed in my head the shower room I put in
next to DN2’s ground floor bedroom was also for me when I wasn’t able to get up
stairs, in many years to come. The place
where I grew up was the hometown of neither of my parents, so whilst it has
childhood memories for me, they went elsewhere to go ‘home’. Indeed, my father’s parents had moved from his
childhood home after he left, so he was disconnected from his past, as they had
been in turn, each having come from different parts of London to make a home
together in the suburbs.
My mother was a great one for venerating the past, especially
things owned by her parents, although in truth they were not ‘family
heirlooms’. My grandparents’ house had
been bombed in December 1940 and they lost all they had, with the exception of
a black fox fur collar I now own, and my mother had to be dug out of their
Anderson shelter in the garden. My
grandfather bought a fully furnished flat, furnished, much to my grandmother’s
disgust, in heavy Victorian mahogany furniture.
So my mother’s childhood had been created too but she adored all she
grew up with and managed to retain most of her parents’ possessions following
their deaths, gnawing bitterly at the things her brother acquired as
‘better’. I could never see that was
true, but it was a sad side to her. In
the last years of her life she took to collecting, indeed she made it onto a
daytime Channel 4 programme with her collection of salts (small dishes used
before pouring salt was invented). I
have them here, and use the larger ones as tealight holders for winter parties;
the rest reside in the cellar while I wait for the motivation to do something
with them.
Creating a home had been very important to me in my
twenties, and I see it in my own daughter now as she sets up her first home
with her fiancé, yes really, but that’s for another post, and her contentment
that radiates from every pore. Much as
I dislike evolutionary psychology, all that explaining things from a past
hypothesised, the idea that we set up home to be a family has intuitive appeal. My Ex Husband definitely wanted a place to
call his home, having effectively left home at 18, something I find impossible
to comprehend these days, and use as evidence in support of his subsequent
behaviour to his family. We worked
together creating our own place, and when the fire damaged our second home so
extensively, I took great comfort from the agreement with which we chose our
new interior; we understood each other’s likes and dislikes and worked in
partnership.
Such memories caused me great pain when I worked on my
present home alone, and at the same time strengthened my sense of self. I was determined to provide security for myself
and my children, so a home and a stable job were essentials. The children have never visited their
father’s home since his departure; I believe they were invited in the early
days, and whatever the truth of that experience, I felt it important they
should have somewhere safe, irrespective of him. What started out as a survival experience
became a pleasure. I have written
elsewhere of buying the chairs to replace the ones he took when he left and
since then I have bought, and sold, the round table, replacing it with a large
Victorian mahogany table capable of seating 8 easily and comfortably. I have learnt there is nothing fixed in a
home, and perhaps that idiom ‘home is where the heart is’ needs more
acknowledgement as a truth to be lived.
All of which is lovely as I sit in my home exploring these
concepts, but my new job is 60 miles away, in an exciting city where I can walk
to shops, bars and cinemas. New
sensations are around every corner, new vistas to be gazed upon. The new job is going well so far, everything
I would have wanted in a job, and being in a city is something I used to dream
of long ago as winter depression sunk deep into me and a slogged another day
through village life and motherhood. But
I get tired and disorientated with all that is new, I know I don’t belong. I describe here as home, but is it? I have been very rattled by the twin appeals
of the old and the new, especially as the old appears to fade into remoteness. When I’m in the city, my home here feels like
a tie I don’t want, a long journey to my past, but being here and walking in
the woods with Archie, I feel strengthened by the familiarity.
And what of the new man?
Being together is great, but living together? Can I really do it, full time? If I’m not jumping at the chance is that
because I don’t really love him?
Actually, I think it’s more to do with financial independence. In the past, and probably even now, people
move together for financial necessity but I don’t need to do that. In fact it’s extremely important to me that I
retain my security and he is grateful for that; having been through a divorce
and lost his home, understandably he is nervous of further commitment. Much as I dislike evolutionary psychology,
I’m no creationist, and I’m mindful of a theory that the Neanderthals died out
because both males and females were hunters and nobody was tending the
home. It’s only a theory, climate change
or interbreeding may also have had something to do with it, but it is worth
bearing in mind that a relationship of two identical parts may have the seeds
of its own destruction already sown.
However, this does not mean I’m contemplating becoming a homemaker above
all other things: I enjoy getting out and working, but also coming back to a
safe space I have created, a space I’m not ready to get rid of anytime
soon. Apart from anything else, I have a
wedding to consider, as Mother of the Bride.
What challenges will that throw up, dear friends, and how will I greet
them? Never fear, I’m sure you’ll find
out soon enough.
It’s good to write again, I wondered, being happy, if I ever
could. Another myth dispelled.
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