Making a Home

Monday, September 7, 2015

Today I am grateful for making a home. We have young friends who just bought their dream farm house and they invited us over for a Sunday night celebration, even though they only moved a few days ago and she has been working like a field hand to gain ground on the chaos. I know the feeling.

Moving sucks. There is no other way to put it, plain and simple. Packing up everything you own, getting rid of stuff you think you can’t live without, hauling, loading, unpacking, organizing, creating space where none exists, trying to figure out how to fill space that you didn’t know you’d have, sorting, separating. . .relocating. . .it all sucks. Even if it’s a change you are happy about and excited for. If you’re moving under duress or adverse conditions, it sucks more than you can imagine is possible.

I did not want to move to Jakarta, Indonesia. I didn’t want to leave my old life, but the only job my husband had was half way across the world. Believe me I lobbied long and hard for other ways to stay married and keep the job, but a friend made me realize that the husband would need someone to holler at after a grueling day, so I went.

Grudgingly I packed four boxes with pictures to put on the refrigerator, table cloths and napkins to remind me of great parties at our home and one of my sculptures. . .all to be shipped. Plus we took a boat load of suitcases on the plane so we could start our new life. . .ten thousand miles away. Yikes!!!

We were three months, from September to early December, in a shee-shee hotel, with suitcases everywhere and golf clubs in the bathtub. While that sounds glamorous, imagine having to wear a bra all the time and put on makeup to go for breakfast. Not as much fun as I thought it might be. It got old fast.

Not long after I met my great friend, Tati, and we rented her marble palace, my shipment arrived. I put the cloth on the table, set the sculpture nearby and plastered a third of the pictures on the baby, petite refrigerator. None of it made me feel less lonely. I felt foreign to my very core.

Christmas plans were made by a few new friends to take a train trip to the fancy Chedi Hotel in the mountains. Energetic staff stood around a large, limp pine tree in the lobby and sang Christmas Carols until we laughed like the family from the movie The Christmas Story as they ate in the Chinese restaurant. My clock was 12 hours and a day ahead of everyone I loved most. I was so lonely. Horribly lonely. Despairingly lonely.

My humor was a mask, when it was there at all. Hard to imagine me without humor, but we all have an Achilles heel.

When we returned from the mountains, to the blazing heat, humidity and pollution on Christmas day, we stopped at a store to buy some shrimp and snack foods which had been a tradition in our family. Sitting on the cold marble floor in the living room, which was as comfortable as the hard furniture, we tried to make the best of it. It wasn’t working. The stupid fake pee-wee tree standing on a shipping box covered by an American table cloth and decorated with Indonesian shadow puppets and book marks just didn’t cut it.

Suddenly the door between our kitchen and the staff kitchen burst open and our gardener was shouting, “Ibu Melinda dan Pak Tom come!” Our new friends, who had been part of the Christmas train excursion, had felt the same morose we did and showed up with their puppy, Billy. The four of us sat on the floor, ate odd food, talked stupid, laughed and played with the pup. “Lonely” went out the window. It was the beginning of a new friendship that is still strong today, 20 years later. . .and bolstered many future parties in Jakarta. Some with people we knew well. . . some with people new to the country. . .whom I met at the market, or video store and I insisted they come anyway.

I learned a huge lesson with that experience. Wherever you live doesn’t feel like home until you have people in and share a meal, even if it’s take-out. When we moved back to Lansdale, we had very little furniture and were barely into the apartment before inviting friends over for dinner. With a cloth over boxes and whatever benches or chairs we could scrounge, having company brought life to the place.

Mortar, bricks, wood, siding, plumbing, heating, air conditioning, appliances, dishes, bedding and furniture all fill a home. But nothing “makes” a home like sharing a meal with others. . .family. . .old friends. . .or new.

iExXl