I have lived in too many houses to count. A peripatetic childhood followed by marriage to a Marine meant a great deal of moving from one house to the next. My memories are a kaleidoscope of scenes from all of these places. I can see the gloriously long and slippery banister in one home where I slid down with glee when no one was looking. I can picture myself in front of a fire in a wing-back chair reading and reading and reading. I can remember the couch on which I sat coloring while my grandmother read to me. I can see the small room with a sink in the corner that was our domicile in a pension in Switzerland, and the lovely Japanese garden complete with fish pond and koi that was in back of our house in Japan.
There were notable things that I remember that made each house something that belonged particularly to its owners. One grandmother had charcoal drawings of the military men in her life on the wall of her living room including my father and grandfather who had died in service to their country. In addition she always had a grand, ornate Medici chest with a secret drawer in its depths left over from her childhood in a wealthy home in Chicago. My other grandmother always had her drop leaf desk made out of Haitian mahogany from my grandfather’s tour of duty in that country in the 30s. It was her spot and I knew better than to disturb her when she sat in front of it.
I would enter each of these different houses with a feeling of comfort, but I did not understand why that was until a young boy, the son of a friend of ours, put it into words. On being asked upon arriving in a new town if he had a home yet, he replied, “Oh yes, I have a home I just don’t have a house to put it in yet.”