There's No Place Like Home for The Holidays, Until There is No Home

[babylonsister]

There's No Place Like Home for The Holidays, Until There is No Home

by Donna Smith


A little box arrived from Chicago last week to my temporary digs here in Washington, DC. Inside were some of the trinkets of Christmases long past. Ornaments that used to hang on trees surrounded by mounds of gifts, plush Mickey Mouse stockings I used to fill with fruit and candy and little toys when my sons were younger, and a candle holder - absent the candle, of course, which had long since been burned on a holiday table brimming with food and with good cheer.

The box holds what is left of those middle class holiday memories. The box has become the only link to a home-for-the-holidays Christmas I can never again share with my children or my grandchildren. You see, like millions of other Americans, we lost our home. And with that loss goes not only the physical security of home and hearth but also the generational ties to stability and security and the sense of well-being that come with being home... with having a home to come to and a home in which to frame the happenings of our lives. We are the new economic refugees of this society. And no bail-outs are pending.

Who among us has not spent a time longing for the comforts of home? And that universal longing has little to do with square footage or amenities and much more to do with a place of comfort and clarity and sameness and steadiness that helps soften the twists and turns of life that we all must experience. But for those of us who become unwilling nomads with no permanent place to stash our stuff, home became a more elusive place - and not really a physical place at all, but a feeling, a memory, a fleeting image of happier days gone by.

Americans now losing their homes to the mortgage crisis and the millions more, like us, who have fallen prey to the healthcare crisis in this nation are losing far more than just an address or an extra bedroom or a driveway or a lifestyle. We are losing the boundaries of our lives - those intimate details of everyday living that make home a safe place to land and place to retreat when daily pressures are too great and - most vivid during this season - a place where our children and grandchildren can return for generational sharing and all the ups and downs that brings to a family.

One of the most heart-breaking losses we've felt in recent years as we tried in vain to cling to some semblance of middle class reality as health crises crushed us is the loss of holidays, the loss of traditions, the loss of intimacy and the loss of respect from our own children who see no home to come to - and no reason to interrupt more exciting holiday pursuits when we can no longer play host to any sort of Smith family soiree with the same sort of meaning.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/23-0

[Fire1]

1. Sounds like Michigan.

[babylonsister]

2. Sadly, it's probably Everywhere, U.S.A. nt