Home Squared

I've been thinking about Gpa a lot over the last year; with his health problems, all the pictures we worked on, etc. I feel so extremely fortunate to have spent the month or so with him in June while he was up here in rehab. I'm glad Daphne was able to spend so much time with him. She knows exactly who Papa Rue is and whenever she sees pics of him she squeals his name with glee.

I've been trying to think of specific memories of him, and while I have them, they are all pretty short and nothing earth shatteringly profound. At first this bothered me. Then I realized that the reason for this is because he was a constant presence in my life. He wasn't there for every little program or anything, and seeing him was never a big deal (except on Christmas Eve). I think that speaks for how important he was. By that I mean that seeing him, visiting him, was just a normal part of my life experience.

There are definitive personality traits for which I can recall short little snippets of memories (Chelsie, I'd like a glass of water with three ice cubes placed right here.). And we all laugh at these because we know they illustrate things about Gpa that were aggravating and we loved him all the more for them.

More than all that, my thoughts seem to bend less toward the specific and more toward the general. Particularly, what his consistent habitation of the goings on of my life did to shape my perceptions and ideas about what family and community should be.

I just finished reading "Dreams of my Father". In it, Obama is trying to figure out who he is and where he fits in the world. He travels to Kenya to meet his father's family. He spends the first part of his trip with the younger family members who live in the capitol city of Nairobi. After a time they travel to where the rest of the family resides and calls "Home Squared". Obama asks them to explain what that means and his sister says:

There's your house in Nairobi. And then there's your house in the country, where your people come from. Your ancestral home. Even the biggest businessman thinks this way. He may have a mansion in Nairobi and build only a small hut on his land in the country. He may only go there twice a year. But if you ask him where he is from, he will tell you that that hut is his true home. So, when we were at school and wanted to tell somebody we were going to Alego, it was home twice over, you see. Home Squared. (pg 369)

That is what Orangeville, and more specifically, the house that Grandpa built and the land that he tended and loved, is for me. Perhaps that is why I've never felt lost in this world. Grandpa was the embodiment of Home Squared.

There are reasons I do not want to live in Emery County. There are the reasons that none of us want to live there and that those who do can't stand about living there.

But there are also reasons I yearn to move back. To have Aunt Lori as Daphne's teacher, to run up the street and visit with some family member, to run into someone I'm related to wherever I go, to have Daphne get to know and love all the places and people I know and love, to have the closest friends (family) for myself and Daphne to be so close at hand, to have a vested interest in my local community, to know the story of every rock and tree and canal and ditch and to know every inch of sidewalk in the town for myself. The scenes of 95% of my nightly dreams are locations in Emery County.

Liza posted some Halloween pics on Facebook and I knew where every single picture was taken. I look through Gpa's pics and feel more at home than when I am sitting in my own house. What I wouldn't give to have East Mountain be within view at all times!

I owe this love for home to Grandpa, directly and indirectly. For the stories he shared with me and with my mother that she then shared with me. For the work he did to help build and shape the county, school district, mountains, Orangeville, and his own home. These things he did created an environment that left me so wholly connected to a place and the people in that place, that he is, to my mind, inexorably linked to that environment. That they are one and the same.