At the end of the Wizard of Oz while Glenda the Good Witch waves her magic wand Dorothy clicks her ruby red slippers and chants these words: “There’s no place like home.” “There’s no place like home.” “There’s no place like home.”
It’s a beautiful scene. It speaks to learning the lesson of appreciating home even if it’s a black & white Kansas… as Dorothy says, “… if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again I won’t look any further than my own back yard because if it isn’t there I never really lost it to begin with.” Glenda confirms that THAT is the lesson that Dorothy needed to learn –on her own.
I had just read an article in The Writer magazine on fictionalizing your home town. I thought Great idea! then I remembered: I don’t have a hometown! Is it Long Beach, Calif. where I was born? or the Bay Area where we lived for only lived for a few months before my dad’s ship was recalled to Long Beach? Was home San Diego? Aiea Hawaii? Vienna Virginia? Chicago? Albuquerque? Like many military brats, I have no idea where home was…or is… So we used that prompt for our last Plume Zoom writing exercise: no place like home. And an invitation to define home however you want…I wrote something and can’t find what I wrote. Fortunately Cassie McClure, fellow military brat and stellar writer, had the same thoughts about home and she shared this letter:
Dear Yellow House on Barlow Street,
I’m still sad that I never got to climb the tree that I still hope shades the back walls. At this point, that lovely tree may be an insurance liability instead of a tantalizing attempt to risk breaking your neck – at least that’s what my Mom thought. I remember asking once, with a friend over hoping that asking in front of her would soften the fear, if we could climb to the first step of the tree, where the branches created the first Y.
Amazing; she did say yes!
But, as I was hoisting myself up with my friend from across the street eagerly encouraging me, she came out and swallowed her rage with all the polite decorum called for in front of strangers. She had meant the nubbin of the root that lifted me up to reach for the branches, the first step stool that the tree had created. Not the tree itself.
The pond is likely still there. Google Earth only told me as an adult how close we actually lived to it, even though Mary Downing Hahn books gave me the good sense not to go messing with things in the dark murky swamps. Her books dealt with the death of children in fires, of the loss of familial connection for old kids in 6th grade. Those were the potent real world ghosts of consequence, not the macabre dance that R.L. Stein offered up or the gloss from those saccharine sweet Babysitter Club books, even if we always learned about Stacie’s diabetes in every book.
I’ve been in another split level house like you. I’ve never seen my parents sweat as thoroughly as they did in the feet of snow that arrived in front of your front steps.
I do remember the bird tapping holes in the siding and burrowing their nests in the walls. I remember the electricity shutting off to some of the house, only to be turned on and off by the switches on the stove. It was the same night as the O.J. Simpson chase, that chase we could not escape on any channel.
I remember romping around with my first dog. Vaguely.
I don’t remember us leaving.
Cassie McClure is a New Mexico-based writer who muses about life from the millennial perspective in her column “My So-Called Millennial Life.” Peppered with parenting observations, life bewilderment and some fist shaking at generations, including her own, she is both relatable and engaging. Read more about Cassie here.