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Memories of Home and Dad
"Sometimes I wish that I could revisit some of those places that I called home during the nomadic period of my life, even if only for one night."
By Calen Robertson
Childhood memories of home can be powerful reminders of relationships with parents and siblings. This father’s day, Calen Robertson in Austin, Texas
says he’ll be thinking fondly of the days when his father didn’t have a permanent home after his parents’ divorce. He sent us this essay to explain...
"So Dad, where are we staying tonight?" This was the question that I asked every other weekend for five years.
I was eight years old when my dad’s land lady gave us two weeks notice to vacate our home because she had a better offer. My father spent the next month looking for a home. He never found one...not in our price range, anyway.
My father looks back on it and says it was never really a decision. Some friends heard about our situation and suggested that we stay over...just for the night. A few weeks later, they went out of town and suggested we take care of their place while they were gone. Before long other friends were making similar offers, and after 5 years we had a network of over 15 houses, including a retired couples’ downtown condo where we would sometimes house sit for months at a time.
My brothers and I took this house hopping in stride, I guess, and not because nothing ever phases us. We had nothing to compare it too. It seemed natural.
And to be perfectly honest, it wasn't bad. Put each house together, and in some bizarre way I had the perfect home. We house-sat for places that had an
upstairs and a downstairs; a place that had a home theatre; a place that had a cozy little park a few blocks away; a house that had a vegetable garden from
which we made pita sandwiches. It was like owning a mansion, where we would only explore small sections of it at a time.
Sometimes, however, despite our vast network of houses, there would be no house sitting gig available. We had to improvise, which usually meant making the
30- minute drive out to Muel Shoe State Park and setting up a tent for the night. By the end of the five years my father, my two brothers and I could set
up or take down a tent in 3 minutes or less. At Mule Shoe we would look for shells, which I would fit together, one inside of the other, like a Russian
doll.
And at the end of these weekend excursions, I would come home to my mother's house, and it really was home; the place that I could always go back to.
Now, five years later, my dad has a permanent address instead of just a P.O. Box. It’s a nice house, with an upstairs and a downstairs, a deck with a view overlooking the greenbelt in our back yard, and a franklin stove in the living room that keeps us warm in the winter. But I’ve already been in every room,
looked inside every closet, and peered into every nook and cranny. The sense of adventure and anticipation with which I looked forward to each weekend with my father is not the same.
Sometimes I wish that I could revisit some of those places that I called home during the nomadic period of my life, even if only for one night. But as I prepare for the transition from living with my parents to living on my own, I find that it is more important for my dad to have a home that’s really his; another place I can always come back to.
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