Safe Home

“Home,” says my two-year-old grandson whenever life gets a bit much or we stray too far from the familiar. “Nana-Grandad home,” I replied this weekend, concerned that he was not due to be delivered back to his place for another 18 hours. “Nana-Gandad-Koan home,” he corrected me, and I breathed, touched that he sees Nana-Grandad-Russell-and the miaow home as his place also.

It got me thinking about what home means, what it means to a two-year-old. A place of safety and security, a place where if you tell Grandad “hungy” there’s a bowl of left-over roasted veg to dig into; where if you say “bed”, someone will take you upstairs, read you a story and tuck you under the covers; where you can scream all you like, but you’re still not going to be allowed to watch Sesame Street until the morning, but if you cry in the middle of the night, someone will always be there to comfort you.

It reminded me of Paul Durcan’s poem “Windfall, 8, Parnell Hill, Cork,” a typically long-winded Durcan ramble. Durcan’s analysis about the meaning of home has stayed with me for years. Too lengthy to reproduce in this post and probably subject to copyright, you can read the entire poem here: https://genius.com/Paul-durcan-windfall-8-parnell-hill-cork-annotated.

My favourite stanzas; this one:

“We're almost home, pet, almost home...
Our home is at...
I'll be home...
I have to go home now...
I want to go home now...
Are you feeling homesick?
Are you anxious to get home?...
I can't wait to get home...
Let's stay at home to tonight and...
What time will you be coming home at?...
If I'm not home by six at the latest, I'll phone...
We're nearly home, don't worry, we're nearly home...”

And this one, steeped in regret of losing his home:

“But then with good reason
I was put out of my home:
By a keen wind felled.
I find myself now without a home
Having to live homeless in the alien, foreign city of Dublin.
It is an eerie enough feeling to be homesick
Yet knowing you will be going home next week;
It is an eerie feeling beyond all ornithological analysis
To be homesick knowing that there is no home to go to:…”

Day after day I read of people displaced from their homes. The unhoused in our cities who no longer have a place to call their own, no safe place to lay their heads at night. Women (mainly), who have fled their homes because of domestic violence. People who have lost their homes to raging wildfires or devastating floods. The civilian victims of the wars being fought in Ukraine, the Middle East, and elsewhere who lose their homes to bombs or are forced to migrate because of famine.

Photo Credit CDC – https://web.archive.org/web/20090116193006/http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ierh/Gallery/Zaire%201Lg.jpg., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=337397

At the turn of 2023, I was in Paris visiting the Banksy Museum. There, I saw the life-sized version of Banksy’s Flower Thrower, for the first time. He painted it in 2003 on the West Bank Wall, separating Israel from Palestine. The wall had recently been constructed. The residents of the area were apparently not pleased. They did not want that wall to be made beautiful in any way. They, presumably, just wanted to be left in peace, just wanted a safe home.

Photo Credit: ZaBanker – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=93718638

Ghazal for Banksy’s Flower Thrower

What is the weight of the bouquet of flowers
Held by the stencilled man on a West Bank wall?

What is the weight of a bunch of roses
Poised to be launched in rage or in peace?

What is the weight of death on our shoulders
In units of rage or measures of grief?

How long must we wait to release that beauty
From the grief on our shoulders, the ache in our bones?

How many flowers will it take for the world
To recognize beauty, to understand home?

“Home” implored my grandson recently when he was home, but fighting a raging fever. In that moment I feared for what “home” meant. Was he leaving us? Was he in a state where nothing felt safe or secure any longer? “You are home”, I said, “Mama is here”, just as I told my daughter when similarly, I feared I might lose her. I thought again of what home meant, and, as if reading my thoughts my phone responded by showing me a poster for a new book by a favourite poet, Roger Robinson. “Home Is Not A Place”. I’ve been carrying that thought around for a while now, and I’m unsure whether I agree. In the end, I think it comes down to finding a place of safety and security in oneself; in finding one’s own peace, one’s home inside.

So, at a time of year when we wish each other peace, health, and prosperity for the coming year, my deepest wish for everyone in 2025 is to find that “Safe Home”.