Home for the Holiday

I’m home this Holy Week –and by home I mean the Long Island house in which I grew up. Although I’ve only spent a few months at this house in the past five years, I don’t know where else to call home.

The Tenety sisters in simpler times.

This home is where I secretly carved the initials of the boy I had a fifth-grade crush on into the wall. This house has the front porch where my little brother and I awaited the trusty call of the ice cream truck as it circled the block. And who could forget the bedroom where four-year-old Elizabeth played salon and gave her obliging younger sister a ‘haircut’? (read: buzz cut). It's funny to look back now, but a toddler with an awkwardly placed bald-spot probably didn't go over well at the Mommy and Me group. Sorry about that one, Mom.

Part of me will always be home in this place. Of course, this is the place –and these are the people –who raised me and loved me and hardened me and shaped me and sent me out into the world. When I was preparing to go away for college, a religious sister at my high school recognized my reluctance to leave it all behind. But she told me that I would never go anywhere alone; that as I held these cherished people and places in my heart, I would be an ambassador for all of those who formed me, to everyone I met. I believe those words.

Over time, part of me moved on and fell in love with people and ideas and places very far away from that house.

Since leaving Long Island, I have lived in Boston, D.C. and Chicago. In ten weeks, I’m moving again. And with a future in military wifedom, home is more of a lovely idea to ponder. They say "home is where the heart is." In that case, mine is scattered in little pieces up and down the East Coast, with bits in Seattle and Thailand, Texas and Illinois. A significant part is about to go on deployment. When that chunk of me is floating somewhere in the Pacific, I’ll check back in and let you know how disorienting that nautical vortex is. Go Navy!

These days, home is where my laptop is –where with the help of Skype, Gmail and Facebook I can see, e-mail and yes, poke, my friends and family. So while they may be thousands of miles away, the ones I love are only as far as my next technologically-facilitated greeting. They can run, but with the aid of Google and my stalker-level research techniques, they cannot hide.

What happens during an eight-day jaunt to the motherland? During Holy Week? Four get-togethers with old friends, three sibling lacrosse games, two visits with the grandmothers and one thank-you-Jesus-for-this-beautiful-madness.

I hope that another year’s Holy Week will leave more time for contemplation. But this year, I pray my gratitude for it all will suffice.

By Elizabeth Tenety  |  March 21, 2008; 2:27 AM ET  | Category:  Campus Catholic
Share: Email a Friend | Technorati | Del.icio.us | Digg | Facebook
Previous: Holy Week: Christmas in Springtime | Next: To Be or Not to Be an English Major

Posted by: Ani | March 30, 2008 3:32 PM
Report Offensive Comment

The comments to this entry are closed.