Home for the holidays isn't as it used to be

THOMPSON E-mail: Click here

© St. Petersburg Times,
published November 17, 2001

It's getting to be that time again, when hearth and home are prominent in our minds, and the place we live takes on an importance unparalleled the rest of the year. It's even more important this year, the first holiday season we've had a director of homeland security. Whether it's Seattle or Tampa, people want to stay close to home.

But what makes a home?

The magazines take on an almost Norman Rockwell allure of baking pies, Martha Stewart quality tables set for big families, and, everywhere, the vision of the glistening, plump 20-pound turkey, recipes handed down from mother to daughter, the illusion that for generations, nothing has changed.

This Thanksgiving my daughter announced she's making chestnut and cornbread dressing. This is not for our extended family -- they'll be spending Thanksgiving at home in Portland, Ore., Palm Springs, New York, Cincinnati and Kansas City -- but for her friends in North Carolina. Where did she get the recipe, I asked her. I had never made cornbread stuffing.

"Foodtv.com!"

As much as we may wish nothing has changed about next week's all-American holiday, reality is another story. A friend of mine whose daughter lives in Washington told me her husband sent her a gas mask. Another is second-guessing his Thanksgiving trip to New York.

On NPR last week, a few of the upscale homeless -- the 10,000 or so who lost their homes near the World Trade Center -- were interviewed. One mother committed to returning was passionate about her neighborhood and, no, she had no qualms about bringing her 4-year-old son back to the site. All winter he'd played at the WTC, riding the elevators up and down. To her, the place was home.

Here in Tampa there are families who have no homes, none at all, no place to return to when the cleanup is finished. Imagine raising children without a home -- children who need to be sent off to school in the morning with their backpacks and to return at night to a place that is their own, to have dinner, do their homework. (Mental note: Send a check to Metropolitan Ministries.)

It's hardly the same, but we had the recent experience of psychological homelessness.

We sold our house, found no place we wanted to buy and so we put our stuff in storage and moved into temporary rented, furnished digs. The condo was rented as of Jan. 1, so even if we'd wanted to stay, we'd have been out -- though certainly not on the street. It hardly seems like a big deal, but during that brief time, there was no place I could call home, no place I could imagine as home.

We were in this position because we hadn't found a place that felt like home.

Ten years ago, I walked through the door of the Craftsman bungalow we just sold, took one step inside and a feeling of mild euphoria and calm settled over me. "I love this house," I said out loud. There were all sorts of reasons not to buy it (like an expensive lease I wasn't going to be let out of), but I did anyway.

This time it was harder.

I wanted a townhouse and while Tampa has plenty of those, nothing resonated, nothing said "home."

We finally found one that did on Sept. 8. So three days later, when the world turned over, we had a home.

All the cartons are unpacked, though some things have not yet found their place. The dining room table has to sit at an odd angle, and I'm not crazy about my (electric) stove. As for how the turkey and the stuffing turn out, I really don't care.

I'm home.

-- Sandra Thompson is a writer who lives in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com. City Life appears on Saturday.

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