A Sense of Place

8:15am                                Writing Practice                              55°  Boise

Kinda dark and cloudy today. Not sure if it's going to try to rain today or what ... nope, just a dark, cool, cloudy day. High will be 69° and no sun at all. The rest of the week will be beautiful though, sunny and perfect temps. I have much to do again today but lately I've been very slow to get anything done. It's like I've been asleep for a very long time and now have to wake myself and start shuffling around again. That's what life feels like after a long illness ... although 8 days is not that long. But still, it's enough to have ones life grind to a halt and mine sure did.

Yesterday I went to the studio for a bit, took things off the cork board and brought the board home. I got a few more boxes when I dropped some items off at the Youth Ranch. Today I'll go back with box tape and begin loading up and start bringing stuff home. It's going to be crowded and uncomfortable here for a while until I can sell some things. But first I'll get the little things I'm going to keep carted out of there. Then when Gigi and Tony come get the little fridge, I'll see if they will help me get a few big things moved --- like my desk and the printer table. Everything else I can manage on my own. I'll take some photos of the items I want to sell and post them on Facebook. All those frames! The folding bookcase. The drop leaf table and two chairs. That may be it. Oh yes, the coffee table where the fridge and microwave sit. It will be so good to get all that stuff dispersed and/or brought home. I was thinking of using the coffee table here, putting the chest under the window in my bedroom and putting the bench in the back bedroom. I think I will. Nice to get a change of pace.

Woke up this morning thinking about my writing projects. I have at least three, maybe four. Learning to Live Far From Home, The Trip Toward the Fall, Self-Empowered Health: A Guide to Everyday Health and Healing, and maybe The Art of Kindness. Yes, that's four books. Wow. Then there's I AM; still here: Surviving Suicide. That's five books! I have enough stories to write five books! Astonishing.

Randy Sandknop, author of five books including the best selling memoir, Learning to Live Far From Home.

Doesn't that sound official and good? I've got my plan and a deadline. 1000 words a day is what I'll write and I'll have a first draft (at least) by March 25th.

As I was making the bed this morning, I was thinking of the sense of place and how each place I've lived feels so different in my memory. As I was smoothing the bedspread, I imagined myself making my bed in Baker City, being there with the the same belongings that I have here but with Baker outside the door. It shouldn't matter, really, Baker has all one needs to live and I hardly avail myself of all that this area has to offer, why would it feel so different? When I close my eyes right now and picture Baker out the front door, I feel restricted, limited somehow. I feel like a plant in a pot too small, no room to stretch. And yet there's plenty there, wide open outdoors, mountains, streams, fresh air! How could that be restrictive? Like there's really no place to go and no one to connect with. When I think of Hannibal, Missouri (ten years ago this month, Stephen and I arrived in Hannibal with our stuff in a huge moving truck that I had driven from California), I feel off balance and adrift, it's too far away! It always felt too far away but I had trouble defining what it was too far away from. I came to understand that it was too far away from my parents, who lived in Hermiston, Oregon at the time and too far away from here. Boise. But that didn't make any sense. Maybe it was the general high dessert area that I missed, the Pacific Northwest region. Because I was born here, did that make it home? And how could I live on the East Coast for so many years without longing for here?

I think the sense of place and the feeling of home changes over time and with altered circumstances. I was fine in Florida for over four years because that's where my family was. But then, I think back and I know I wasn't fine ... I was drunk. I was miserable. I was marking time until John retired and we could start our real life. I was waiting for my real life to begin. I was holding down the fort as best I could while weathering the storms of unhappiness and feeling misplaced by not being entirely sober, especially the last few years. And when John announced that he was not going to retire, that we were moving to Alameda and join ship's company on the USS Lincoln, well, that was it for me. I melted into a hot mess and didn't begin to recover until I stopped drinking a few years later.

I have distinct memories of things that happened in every place I ever lived, what the rooms looked like, the streets, the towns, what we did and what cars we drove. I have an incredible memory and I'd love to write all this down, each location with a strong sense of place.

Yesterday I made the statement that it was the desire for "home" that drove my relationship decisions all my life and until I wrote that down, I did not know it. Since then, I've pondered the truth of it and it stuns me. I tried to make homes with Bob, I moved us around and around all over the place until I realized that I couldn't make a home with him. Rick had a house in Beaverton and while it wasn't a very good house, he owned it (or was buying it), and I liked that feeling of owning a home. I wanted in there with him but he wouldn't allow it. I spent countless hours visualizing my ideal home during the years I spent with Rick. I doubt that I would have stayed with him had he not had that house. Then I met John and he offered me a home in California, a house with a pool in the back yard. In California. Did I mention that it was in California?! Where I was yanked away at age 11 and always yearned to get back to ever since? I was a California dreamer well before the song came out. My first yearnings for home began as we drove away from there and headed north to Baker County in 1964. So there was no way I was going to decline that offer from John Sandknop --- it was a dream-come-true on a soul level. He had no idea (and neither did I) that he was offering me my heart's desire. So even though I wasn't in love with him and I had no interest in a military lifestyle, I was very attracted to him and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Little did I know that when I married him, I actually married that house on Lemmon Way and I would never be happy again without it.

Well, so many interesting realizations about home. I managed to shift myself around all those years ago until I finally got what I wanted ... a home of my own in the location of my choice, along with plenty of freedom and no one else to please. All the choices I made over the years were leading me here and I was blind to it until just now. I wanted a sense of home but I also wanted Stephen to have a sense of home as well and he never did. He was just as lost by the whole idea as I was, so he hitched himself to Mike and created a home with cats and when that fell apart, he didn't have the tools to cope with the loss. He lost Mike and the cats but he lost his sense of home, of connection, of belonging, and he withered away and died. I know just what that feels like! My poor baby. Oh Stephen, I'm so sorry!