The Greenhouse
A Sunday Scribbling:
Like the broccoli and kale starts I’ve been planting in my garden, I was taken from the safety of the greenhouse of my childhood and transplanted somewhere else.
I used to lie in bed at night as a young girl and think about life. Why in the world would I want to go out and find someone to marry to make a new family with when I already had a good family? Why would I want to find a stranger to live with when I was happy where I was?
Pulled up by my roots, I didn’t want to go, but eventually I yielded to something larger than myself and made the move from Massachusetts to Texas in 1978 because my husband at the time had work there.
The Texas transplant didn’t fully take, but I was nourished for the years I lived there. I loved the fields of bluebonnets, but not the hot weather. I loved my first husband’s family, but not the lack of hilly landscape and seasons. I loved the early days after my sons were born, but not being so far away from my own family.
After seven years and with two young sons, my first husband and I set out for Virginia. Drawing on my love of Annie Oakley and Daniel Boone, we headed for Virginia to homestead and home school our sons. We were young and adventurous and sought like-minded souls rooted in a vision of community.
Like a goldfish that was taken from a bowl to a fish tank and then to a river, in Virginia I was out of the pot. With acres of green space and others who were plowing and planting in the same garden, I have grown in ways that the girl could not have imagined. Although, the first marriage wasn’t meant to last, the move to Virginia led me to Joe, the true love of my life who I would not have found had I stayed in Massachusetts.
My sons are rooted here and I am rooted to them. But my own roots trace back to the place of the green house, and so the theme of my life has become being town between two places. One has mountains, one has an ocean, and both have family.
I dream of Hull the way I imagine my Grandmother dreamt of her homeland in Youhal, Ireland. I have a recurring dream of walking the length of Hull, the way we used to as kids when we spent all our money, including our bus fair, at Paragon Park and had no way home but to walk. I think I’m the only kid in my family, or all of Hull for that matter, who grew up when Paragon was still there and never rode on the roller coaster. I always played it safe, not like my reckless brothers.
My childhood home was green. It was taken by our town through eminent domain and burned to the ground. Like our green house at 10 ½ Spring Street, the sewage plant building that now stands in its place faces the Hull Village Cemetery, the place we played and sledded as kids before it was so filled up with gravestones, the place where two of my brothers and my father are now buried.
My brothers feel so far away, not because they’re dead now but because they are buried in Hull and I’m in Virginia … Danny and I shared a dream of buying a beachfront condo in Hull, so we both could spend extended time there. I’m still in Virginia, but Danny is home now. If you stand at his grave, lean forward and look to the left, all the way down Duck Lane, you can see the ocean.
I am rooted in two places, but in one place my roots go deeper.
Post Notes: The following was written via the Sunday Scribblings prompt “rooted.” More Scribblings are HERE. The italicized excerpts were taken from The Jim and Dan Stories, the book I wrote in the first six months after losing my brothers. More about that is HERE. My other Sunday Scribblings are HERE. Spoken Word tonight at the Café Del Sol.
Comments
I really enjoyed this post, Colleen... I understand your feelings of being rooted in more than one place. For me, the pacific northwest will always be home, but I also grew very attached to Pennsylvania during the four years I called it home. And then there's Coney Island, which although I've never lived there, is a spiritual home for me. (I envy that you got to live so close to an amusement park, even if you never did ride the roller coaster.)
Posted by: Jeanne | April 21, 2007 12:41 PM
Thanks, Jeanne. I do hope the old time amusement parks don't go the way of the drive-ins.
That is my childhood home in the photo.
Posted by: colleen | April 21, 2007 1:09 PM
I've always felt that I'm "rooted" wherever I exert the most energy. Strange enough, I feel like all of my roots to the Northshore of Boston have diminished. I feel much more rooted to both Cedar Key and Paris...I resonate with these places as no other.
Posted by: Terri | April 21, 2007 2:21 PM
Roots are a great thing to have. Mine are currently 500 miles away and are having some trouble getting me any kind of nourishment so I have replanted myself in a traveling pot and am working from there until I can settle down some. advice given from Rosemary
Posted by: Leigh in Atlanta | April 21, 2007 4:39 PM
Very interesting. I never thought I could live (much less "root") in the South but I've been in NC for almost 30 years and it is my final resting place, I believe.
Posted by: ginnie | April 21, 2007 4:49 PM
Funny, I thought I hated Utah, until I left for nearly three years. Now, all I want is to go home, to where our friends are, to familiar if not pretty places. No such roots for the Detroit where I grew up, where I knew little but my parent's home and my school and church. But strange, ugly Salt Lake holds my heart, I know not why. And Boston does not.
Posted by: zhoen | April 21, 2007 5:04 PM
by the by...did I miss something or do you always do your sunday scribbling on saturdays?
Posted by: Leigh in Atlanta | April 21, 2007 7:37 PM
Nice story!
I've loved the couple times that I've visited Hull by the way.
Posted by: Don Pare | April 21, 2007 7:38 PM
What a remarkable post! Thank you so much for sharing.
Here via Michele today
Posted by: Blue Monkey Jammies | April 21, 2007 10:18 PM
I enjoyed reading this post. Very nice.
Posted by: Delane | April 21, 2007 10:46 PM
Yep, sure wish I could go back to my childhood.
Loved reading your post and glad Michele sent me over! :o)
Posted by: Karen | April 22, 2007 12:10 AM
Thanks for your comment Colleen. In fact our posts took a rather similar tack, they were just written very differently. I love the old photo too.
Posted by: Betty C. | April 22, 2007 2:31 AM
What a wonderful post Colleen...I love the idea of "rooted in two places"....and everything you said....WONDERFUL. You have the most wonderful way of expressing your feelings and thoughts, my dear. I LOVE that picture, too!
Posted by: OldOldLady Of The Hills | April 22, 2007 6:28 AM
Lovely post. I think anyone who has lived in many places is always grounded or rooted on more than one place.
Posted by: Paris Parfait | April 22, 2007 9:15 AM
That was a beautiful post. I miss Massachusetts too, but home is where you make it. I would never move back
Posted by: Ann | April 22, 2007 9:29 AM
I really enjoyed this post! What beautiful pictures. I began reading your entire blog and I cannot wait to read more!
Posted by: Karen Travels | April 22, 2007 9:35 AM
My, what an enjoyable post to come to early on a Sunday morning. (Well, it's still early here in California.) Your book sounds wonderful, too.
Posted by: Patois | April 22, 2007 10:11 AM
I tried to comment yesterday....but I was too sad with this post.
Do you know who took this picture? Was it you? xox
Posted by: Sherry | April 22, 2007 10:58 AM
No, I don't live in Virginia. I know Becky from Mass. I live in the lakes region of NH now and I love it. I know I'm not as far away from home as you, but it seems like a long way away.
Posted by: Ann | April 22, 2007 12:11 PM
I have lived in 4 different places and in 2 different continents and I feel I am somehow rooted in these places but don't belong to any 100%...
Posted by: mar | April 22, 2007 12:28 PM
I don't know who took the photo. I think it was around 1968. I can tell by Jim's blue Nova in the driveway. I probably stole it from Ma a long time ago because she had others and I knew I needed a photo of it. It was also posted here http://www.looseleafnotes.com/notes/2005/06/a_flood_of_old_memories.html#comments with another story. xo
Posted by: colleen | April 22, 2007 12:50 PM
Funny how one closed door leads to another open one. I never thought as a kid that I would marry or have kids. Well, no kids were in the cards but I've been married for 27 years!
Posted by: Ruth | April 22, 2007 4:47 PM
I was never able to feel completely rooted anywhere else but here in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I often think about a tiny town on the St. Lawrence River in upstate New York, though, where I may have sprouted a small root or two before I moved on!
Posted by: Leslie | April 22, 2007 5:05 PM
very beautifully written, colleen....and i could SO relate with your thoughts and feelings here. although i grew up in KY, we moved when i was 14 to the blue ridge in NC- and my heart has been there ever since. i don't really feel any connection to Ky anymore.
and i've never quite felt rooted since moving from the blue ridge in 98 to my husband's hometown in MD and then to where we are now. although, we've started to inch a little further south with each move. :)
Posted by: bluemountainmama | April 22, 2007 6:58 PM
Oh Colleen it looks like a happy childhood home.
I enjoyed learning more about you....and I'm glad you found Virginia and Joe!
Posted by: Deana | April 22, 2007 8:57 PM