home is where the head is?
Walking along the coastline this morning, I watched a fleet of tiny daysailers racing a course in the harbor through an empty mooring field. Spring in the north Atlantic has its moments, but many days look like today: it is bleak, friends. The sky is bright grey-white, demanding sunglasses even when the sun’s warmth does not reach me. The air is raw—a quality only known in northern seaside climates, I think—a bitter humidity that sneaks through cracks in your jacket to settle in your bones. The thermometer lies: 50 degrees? Please. It feels like 30, and the water temperatures are still frigid. I optimistically wore my favorite Birkenstock clogs without socks today: I regret it. The snow has departed for the season, leaving filthy mounds of sandy detritus in its wake—empty nips, and torn fishing nets, and jagged driftwood, and plastic grocery bags twisted along the edge of the beach, trapped in gnarled bramble. The drab cedar-shingled summer houses are barely open for the season, so they also show tired signs of wear, like flaking white trim and missing shingles blown off the ridgelines.
And yet: this is home. “Once a New Englander, always a New Englander,” I think to myself. I’ve lived in exotic tropical places and high mountain places and gentle Mediterranean places and no place feels as much like home as these scant, unforgiving coastlines. Thinking back on the winter, Bear ruefully grumbled that he’s getting too creaky “to shovel this shit anymore” and I get it. But I know we won’t leave—at least, not for long. We visit stunning climates in South Africa and the British Virgin Islands and say to each other, “BABE, WE NEED TO MOVE HERE, NO, SERIOUSLY” but we return home, again and again, knowing that we will miss this idiosyncratic, rugged place.
Why do we stay in familiar places and idealize foreign ones? The grass is always greener, of course. But aside from the jobs and families and friends that keep us tethered, how do we make being here and now feel like enough? This is, of course, the central concern of santosha (our yoga and meditation retreat center, Santosha at Hillholm Estate is its namesake), and the Sanskrit term for settled contentment without striving. More on that another time, because my real question for you is: how do you mindfully make a place feel like home?
For me, this morning, making this place feel like home meant deliberately seeing the warm spots in the darkness. My feet may have chilblains after this long winter, but have you seen the daffodils yet? Daffodils are my favorite flower, bar none. I know the crocuses typically beat the daffodils out of the frozen ground each spring, but the smattering of school-bus-yellow blooms that dot our grey New England landscape give me a thrill every year, without fail. A few daffodils start out, still surrounded by that winter detritus I desccribed (we are slow to open our garden beds). But a week later, the shallow spots along our country roads fill with hundreds of wild daffodils, making mighty pools of brilliant warmth amidst the stiff pines and crusty ledges. Sometimes, I just drive around slowly, looking for those patches, each one feeling like a hidden surprise left just for slow seekers like me. On highway medians, alongside gutters: they promise a warmer season to come. It may be raw, it may not feel like summer until July, but for now: the daffodils sustain us. The key, then, to making this place feel like my home is warming it with mindfulness. Just as easily, I could rush by, stuff my hands in my pockets, and ruminate on to-do lists for the day. But what a loss, to miss these daffodils! By intentionally directing my mind away from rumination and toward observing these beauties, I make rugged terrain my home.
How do you make an unlikely place feel like home?
Mind your flow,
JennyBess
