A Place Called Home

Although I haven’t been inside my grandparents’ Montana farmhouse in years, until recently I believed it was still my real home. No matter that my grandparents died years ago, and the house and the last of the land has long since been sold. I was stubbornly clinging to the place because my best memories resided there.
My parents gladly left Montana right after their wedding, beginning what they hoped would be a more exciting life in Seattle, but my two sisters and I cherished our month-long visits every year. We loved everything about being there: the visits to our second cousins and the menagerie of livestock on our great uncle’s farm; their feisty Shetland pony, who was especially skilled at bucking us greenhorns into the gooiest mud puddles he could find; the goody drawer by the kitchen sink our grandfather had lovingly stocked just for us; even the familiar sounds of our grandparents arguing in the mornings and of my grandfather’s hacking smoker’s cough. To me, that was home, more so than the apartment building in California where we lived.
The romantic child that I was, I felt I needed a deep connection to a place, and the farm fit the bill. It was our family’s version of an ancestral home. My grandparents farmed there for 20 years until my grandfather’s health failed, and my grandmother lived there for another 25 after that. Before that, my grandmother’s parents had been tenant farmers on that same land in the twenties, until they bought a farm less than a mile up the road.
Living there someday had been a dream since childhood, and it came true when I lived with my grandmother as I earned my bachelor’s degree at Montana State University in nearby Bozeman. Shortly after my husband and I were married on the farm, we moved to Vermont to take jobs there.
Three years later, my grandmother died of cancer. It wasn’t until nearly eight years after her death, though, that I first became aware of how grieving her and the loss of that home were far from complete.
I attended a church women’s retreat, and our minister led us in a guided imagery exercise. After listening to some classical music, we drew pictures of whatever the music evoked. I drew my grandparents’ Quonset barn and the barnyard where my sisters, our friends and I had spent so many happy hours. In my drawing, a river bisected the property. On one side I drew little green and blue figures, as wispy and delicate as fly ties, and on the other side I drew myself.
It wasn’t until I finished the drawing that its meaning became clear to me. I was separated from what I had considered to be my true home, and it hit me for the first time that I was never going to be able to go back there. Strangers had taken up residence in what had been my grandmother’s home for almost fifty years.
Their farm and the place where it was situated are stunningly beautiful, and I do miss being able to enjoy that beauty from that vantage point. But it’s more than just a piece of gorgeous real estate that appealed to me. What inspired me most was the way they lived, with a commitment to values of sharing what they had, loyalty and hard work that is rare today. Her death ended an era. Their example is what I really have been missing. The sale of the farm was merely an obvious focus for my grief.
What I learned from my grandparents about life isn’t buried like hidden treasure on that farm; it’s more accessible. Like the good farmers they were, they planted a seed of reverence for old-fashioned, but not outdated, values I carry with me wherever I go. I’d been looking for a constant, and I’ve come to realize I am the constant, as is anyone who ever loved them and honors their memories. I believe it’s possible to recreate, in a different time and place, the caring and belonging my grandparents offered me. Then, like them, I can welcome others from a place of knowing and abundance, where love and acceptance can be exchanged.
As for losing the first home I ever loved, I figure that as long as I’m able to remember my grandparents and their home, it will always be a sacred place for me. With this legacy, I can be at home almost anywhere.

Story ID:	1840
Written by:	Diana Shellenberger (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Musings, Essays and Such
Location:	Longmont CO USA
Year:	2007