Shelter In Place

Last Sunday morning I was vacationing at my father's house, half a country away from my own home. I was sat in a comfortable deck chair enjoying the morning sun before its midday metamorphosis turned the whole operation into an oppressive, carcinogenic oven. My father and his wife were at church, and for the moment, I was alone.

An important note about me: I'm a bit of a muller. At any given moment, especially if I'm not actually speaking or listening to someone, it's very likely that I'm lost in my own thoughts. For a week or two before my trip, I'd been turning the idea of safe places around in my brain. When I say "safe places" it's important to note that I do not mean "Safe Spaces." I recognize the importance of the double capital S entities that have become so maligned by the righteously un-PC among us, but what I was thinking about was even more personal. My visit to my childhood home brought the idea into sharp focus.

My father's home is not my safe place. Though it was the only home I knew from birth to the age of majority, it never was, at least not at any point I can remember. I can remember fear. I can remember fighting. I remember guilt, shame, hurt, loneliness, and occasional joy. I remember hiding. Mostly though, I remember my bedroom.

If there was a safe place of any kind in that house, it was my bedroom. When I was 12 or 13, I got a TV/VCR for my room at Christmas. At 15, I bought myself a DVD player and amassed an impressive collection. I had a job in high school and distinctly recall pricing mini fridges and microwaves. I don't remember ever thinking it explicitly, but in retrospect, the clear goal was to never have to leave my bedroom again; at least until I could leave it for good.

In the home stretch of my childhood, something miraculous happened...I found a place. I was 17, angry as hell and also terrified. I had a car and a job, so I'd gone from never leaving my room to never coming home. Sure, I was on a tight leash with a strict curfew, but I was also an overachiever. As such, I had school clubs, athletic practices and various competitions to keep me busy along with regular school hours, work and church (we did a LOT of church). I discovered that if I played it right and didn't really care about gas prices, I could manage to be away for vast portions of most days.

I'd drive two towns over to get a milkshake or kick the soccer ball around on an empty field. I'd find a back road and drive fast (too fast) and hope I didn't get caught. Broken land speed records aside, my car was almost safe. It was fun to feel so independent, and to this day a solitary drive is almost always soothing to me, but it wasn't quite it. I needed a person.

Then I found them.

As an overachiever, I was frequently at school after hours, talking to teachers and advisors. My senior year, I was partly in charge of an academic club with a brand new faculty advisor. Before the year even started, I'd introduced myself and offered my services, such a gentleman/woman/person. This was a fairly involved club, so we'd often have lunch and after school meetings. Being (sort of) in charge meant even more responsibility for me, so I skipped band practice when I could to attend even more meetings and practices. Then I just started hanging out with this teacher damn near every day after school.

I'm trying to remember how it happened...why my teenaged brain could have possibly thought this was a good idea...but eventually I started visiting my faculty member at home. Evenings not spent at work or on school projects started to become TV watching events with my...friend?...person. I'd stay until late evening then go home to my room to start my homework. I never slept much in my own home, so I eventually started falling asleep on their couch during reruns of Friends or particularly boring movies. At the time, I remember being vaguely embarrassed and getting teased for it, but now all I can think of is how safe I must have felt, falling asleep in someone else's home, and how kind it was of them to just let me be, even for a little while.

Sometimes I'd bring food from my restaurant job or swing through a drive thru for ice cream for the both of us. It may not seem like it, but it was a starkly unromantic gesture; I think I was just enjoying caring for someone else and being able to give something to someone who was, again in retrospect, caring so much for me.

We kept in touch when I went to college. Over the next few years we racked up hours, probably days of night and weekend minutes. I grew up in fits and starts and began to stop hiding. I became who I am and, for the most part, they bore witness to it. Then we stopped talking. For years.

Last year, on a crisp fall evening, I sat on my porch with a massively alcoholic drink in my hand and used my two weapons of choice, drunkenness and the internet, to track them down. With impulsivity in the driver's seat, I called a phone number I wasn't even sure was correct and left a voicemail that was likely incomprehensible. And they called back. And we talked. Well, I talked, they listened. Over the next few months, we kept talking.

Late Sunday afternoon, I got to do the goddamned impossible; I got to go home again. I was terrified, but it was amazing. Like my father's house, the furniture was mostly different. I didn't fall asleep on the new couch and I wasn't the one who procured the pizza, but there was TV and joking and it felt almost the same.

Although our relationship has changed for the better, my father's house is not my safe place. It's a friendly place, a nice place, but it's still not home to me.

I'm not going to send you here, to this blog post, safe place person of mine, because just writing this weird non-romantic love letter about you would probably creep you out enough. Thank you. For letting me exist with you and teaching me what home feels like, thank you. I'm not sure that I'll ever know exactly what that meant in the context of your life, but for me, it's meant everything.