Contemplating "Home"

Since writing the Samhain post about honoring my grandfather, Giuseppe, the other day, I've been thinking about the concept of "home." He moved around a lot, was an immigrant a few times over, and when I was younger I found some sense of pleasure out of the description my mother gave our family as "nomads." Yes, we have appeared to have a sort of "itch," it seems.

Since our immigrant ancestors, we've ever been on the move. At first perhaps it was due to the pursuit of better economic conditions, but is there something more? A constant search for a feeling of "rightness" and belonging?

Last night I was watching an episode of the Originals (a vampire show) and the topic of "home" popped up. Two of the characters were discussing how fiercely they would defend their right to live in their home city, and I thought, "I don't know what that feels like." To be so connected to the place where you live that you would fight to stay there. So I decided to pull some cards about it. I didn't ask a clear question, I simply held this idea in my mind as I shuffled ("What is home, and how does a lack of home impact me? How do I find home?"). I pulled:

8 of Grails/Cups - Judgement rx - 10 of Skulls/Pentacles rx

Tarot of Vampyres

The 8 of Grails was fitting, since it is a card of movement, of dissatisfaction or lack of fulfillment. It's about going on a journey. There is something here of the nomad experience. The 10 of Skulls is the quintessential "family legacy" card - what do you pass down to future generations, and what have you received from your own ancestors? It's a card a closely associated with the essence of a family's material being and presence. And in the center lies Judgement, provoking so many questions I don't even know where to begin.

I live in central Florida now, but I was born on the east coast, and spent my early years between Connecticut and Rhode Island. At about kindergarten age my natal family moved to Michigan, and for nine years I lived in one town, moving to another (very different) city for the next eighteen years. Then my husband and I packed up our things and our kids, and drove into the deep south. You might think that Michigan would have been that "home" for me, but I felt discontented there despite having lived in that state for most of my life. It didn't feel like home, though it was certainly very familiar.

And while there have been many wonderful aspects about life in our "new" state, I don't feel at home in Florida either. So I ask myself:

Will we always keep moving on in search of a place that feels right? If so, we will never provide that land-rooted legacy for our future generations; instead ours will be a legacy of the nomad, the pilgrim, the wanderer. 

And if we always search, are we destined never to find? 

Is the answer in the act of deciding to stay rooted to a place, to not move even when we feel discontented? 

Is the answer in the realization that our legacy moves within us and doesn't need to be anchored; that perhaps our legacy itself is in our movement?

Is there perhaps no answer at all? 

Perhaps this is the legacy of all immigrants who lose their connection to ancestral lands. There is something to be said for the "family oversoul" - those gentle energetic ties that connect us to our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents and beyond. As I did a cursory search of my own blog I found that for last year's Samhain post I had a "conversation" with my grandmother (who passed on thirty years ago) and the 10 of Pentacles was the heart of the draw. It's interesting that it has come up again almost exactly one year later. In the context of that post the focus was on honoring and reuniting family - the idea that home is where the largest grouping of multigenerational family is. A year ago we were considering moving back to Michigan since my mother and step-father are still there. And yet we are still here, with no plans to go anywhere anytime soon.

I sometimes imagine how our family's oversoul impacts me, us. Does my grandfather's wandering nature wield a more forceful vibration through the generational lines? His children, whose American bloodline epicenter lies in Connecticut, are now in Michigan, Tennessee, and Florida. Two of them are fairly regular world travelers. Their children are in England, New Zealand, Alaska, Saudi Arabia, Boston, Florida, California. The net is cast ever wider. Most of those are world travelers as well.

So is "home" in the people, or in the land? Is it in both? How do we recapture a sense of belonging - to each other, to a particular part of the earth? Or do we not? Do we simply restructure, rebuild, reconfigure family "legacy"? Do we start over, honoring the past and releasing it? I don't know, but I'll be sitting with this for time to come.

10 of Bolers: Presence of the Ancestors

This morning I woke up with my son snuggling against me. The first words out of his mouth, still in the haze of sleep, were, "You need to fix your hair, mister!" I smiled at the sweetness of his child's innocence and honesty, all imbued with bottomless love. (Then I complied and put my hair in a bun.)

As I rose I felt drawn to my bóveda (altar). I've been needing to connect with my ancestors for weeks now, and while I continue to tend to my sacred space - changing the water in my glasses, occasionally offering a hot cup of coffee - I still feel the deeper call to really sit with them and invite their constant presence more intentionally into my mind and heart. This morning, after giving the Boy his bowl of cereal, I set a pot on to brew, and when it was ready I brought a steaming mug to my bóveda. Instead of the fly-by offerings of late (work has been hectic, and I've been quite engaged with the Shadow Work October challenge in my "idle" moments), I stood there for a time. I thought of my grandmothers and grandfathers, all of whom have passed on. I felt the presence most noticeably of my paternal grandmother, Lillian, and I acknowledged her. I called off the surnames of all of the forebears that I know of, and then expanded out to the countries and areas of the world where I know that they came from: Italy, the British Isles, Scandinavia, Northern Africa and the Middle East, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, Hungary...... I opened myself up to honoring all of those who contributed to my bloodlines, all of those without whom my physical being would not be. I asked them to be with me, that I may always be "open" to their support and guidance.

Buckland Romani Tarot

I returned to the kitchen and prepared my own coffee with sugar and cream, and then sat down at the table to pull my card of the day from my new Buckland Romani Tarot app (the first such app I've ever owned, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit!). I received: 10 of Bolers (Pentacles).

And I just smiled, because there they all were, my ancestors, there, present, waiting for me. The 10 of Pentacles is often called the "legacy" card because of the ways in which it represents our material and physical ties to our broader family networks. Thus it is also a primary "ancestor" card. I had never seen this particular version of the 10 of Pentacles before, and there is something special in the position of these people, quietly watching...there. It felt like a warm acknowledgement for me from them.

Amid the toils of everyday work life, woven through the fabric of family togetherness, in the liminal spaces of my thoughts and dreams, my ancestors are there with me.