Homesick: Assignment #10

This time it was my turn to give me and my sisters a writing assignment. I asked that we all write about a particular time that Mom did something that made us swell inside with respect for her. Underlying this assignment, of course, is the assumption that this happened many times, but I asked that we each write about one such time.

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On consecutive Sundays, February 18, 25, and March 4, 1962, CBS ran a three part Lassie story called "The Odyssey". In it, Lassie gets locked in a produce truck and is taken hundreds of miles from home. The three part series alternates between Timmy's inconsolable heart-sickness that Lassie is gone and Lassie's courageous odyssey back home.

The story began with Timmy and Lassie making a friendship pact with each other in front of a fallen log which Timmy declares to be their special secret place and he buries a bone there as a sign of their everlasting friendship.

It was a heartwrenching three weeks for me. I was seven years old. We lived at our little house at 14 E. Portland. Near the end of part three, Timmy goes out to his and Lassie's secret special place by the fallen log and digs a hole. He tosses Lassie's toys in the hole. He begins to cover the toys with dirt. Above him, at the crest of the hill, he hears a familiar bark. The Lassie theme song swells. Lassie comes over the horizon. I cried and cried and cried. It was the first time I ever cried for joy. I'd never felt so happy. Lassie came home.

In my mid-twenties, I began to realize that Shakespeare's two most famous tragi-comedies touched me in the same way that Lassie's Odyssey did. Both "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest" move us by their end because characters who have been long separated from home, return again.

I began to realize that being lost or separated from home and finding home again is not just an external reality. I began to realize that Lassie's return, Leontes' return, and Prospero's return stand for an internal state, an inner reality of being at home within oneself. It is the return to the safe, the protected, and the familiar.

The first time I realized this truth about home was in the summer 1965. I was eleven years old. I went to Boy Scout Camp at Camp Easton for the first time. Upon arriving at camp, we were immediately taken to the lake for a swim test. I jumped in and the water was ice cold to me. It made me afraid of the lake for the rest of the week.

I didn't ever realize I could shower at camp. I didn't swim. I didn't shower. By mid-week, I quit changing clothes. About that same time, I was sent to the rifle range to bring Craig Lenhart back to the camp headquarters. I arrived at the range and naively called out that Craig was wanted back at headquarters. The rifle range director went ballistic. He vociferously got in my face and yelled at me. He claimed that my calling out while boys were shooting rifles could have caused a serious accident. I cried going back to headquarters, despite Craig's comforting me that it was all right. (By the way, I'd know Craig all my life. When we lived at 14 E. Portland, he was our next door neighbor.)

I badly wanted to go home. On Friday night, visitor night, I thought Mom was going to come to camp. She didn't. Something came up. It was legitimate. I think Joan Dorendorf told me Mom couldn't make it. I ran up the trail back to camp and dove into my tent and sprawled out on my sleeping bag and cried. I wanted to go home.

The next day, the canteen sold candy and I bought a huge amount and comforted myself with Milk Duds and Big Hunks. The drive back to Kellogg seemed to take all day. When I got home, Mom was in the living room. I opened the door to our house, face dirty, clothes dirty and smoky, hands dirty, and fell into Mom's arms sobbing.

Mom understood. It would have been so easy to mock me. I was a wreck. She ran me a bath so I could get cleaned up. She listened to me sob about how I felt the night before when she didn't come to camp.

Looking back, I deeply respect how Mom helped me feel better. Moreover, that moment helped seal for me the fact that our house at 516 W. Cameron was not just a shelter, but a home, a home with pot roast, meatloaf, hot showers, diet Pepsi, a place for my family, a place for Snug, a place I can come when in need.

I've always been homesick when not in Kellogg. I was homesick when I went to Boys' State and my only achievement was being elected County Coroner. I was homesick when my first marriage failed and Mom made sure that when I came home for Christmas without my wife in 1981 that I wouldn't be judged and could have a place to start trying to pull myself together. I was homesick when I was comatose with meningitis in 1999. I cried for my mother. In the spring of 2000, I went to Kellogg for several weeks. I was on sabbatical. Mom's house was my home where I continued my recovery.

The need for home is our deepest need. That Mom has always made sure that I always have a home to return to in Kellogg makes my heart swell with respect for her -- and with love.