Monday Morning Musing: Cliches and other Clunky Ways of Being Real

Cliches are cliches for a reason. They are overused phrases that illustrate something that we collectively believe to be true. Kate Bowler (two weeks in a row I've mentioned her) named her book that later became the title of her podcast after one such phrase: Everything Happens for a Reason. (Book is Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I've Loved and is available wherever you buy your books, but try to buy at least some from your local bookseller. Podcast is Everything Happens.)

This morning I'm thinking about another turn of a phrase: Home is where the heart is. There are other phrases we repeat about Home. Some helpful, some not. But there are two reasons I've been mulling this one over.

One is obvious: we picked up the keys to our new home yesterday and moved in some of the boxes we schlepped across the country with us. We walked from room to room mentally placing furniture. We metaphorically arm wrestled over the bigger closet (it's an old home, so the closets are neither big or plentiful). I put a jug of my favorite iced tea in the fridge (Milo's, brewed in Birmingham). We walked through the yard to look at what's growing in the flower beds. We sighed a lot, in gratitude and relief that we have this place to hang our hearts.

Only here's the thing. Our hearts will be there but they also walk around in our beloveds and they beat in the places we've lived before. So, maybe this cliche is helpful, and I wonder if it's not more expansive than I even realized.

The other reason I've been thinking about it is because my grandmothers have been on my mind lately. My paternal grandmother lived her adult years in the home that her husband built. It's still in our family, there in the Normandale neighborhood of Pekin, Illinois. My cousin was the last one to live there before her untimely death a couple of years ago. And my Nanny always lived in modest homes that still managed to hold more love than the largest mansion could contain.

I suppose home is where the heart is, but parts of my heart are in that Normandale neighborhood house, where my cousins and I played endlessly and parts of it are in those warm, inviting homes where my Nanny and Papa loved me beyond measure and parts of it are in Los Angeles and Portland and Gig Harbor and some of it lingers in Bexley and Sulligent and Scottsboro and Lancaster and Tuscaloosa and Huntsville.

Cliches tell a certain truth, but they don't encompass it entirely. They invite us to dig a little deeper to see whether we believe that what is said is really how we know it to be.

If you've read along here for any length of time, you know that I enjoy Lucille Clifton's poetry. This is one of my favorites and it is my wish for homes everywhere, yours and mine:

May This be a House of Joy

May this be a House of Joy. May we be open here to dreams, and to each other.

May all who enter in these magic walls feel love and feel respect for learning and each other. May we be always friends to life. May we walk in that friendship.

May learning live in this house. May it never leave.

—- by Lucille Clifton