The home within.

When I was five or six years old, I pulled my little red wagon around the neighborhood and collected nature’s treasures.

Once the collection had grown so the acorns I tossed in no longer clinked the wagon bottom, I wheeled it to the end of the street and set off to deliver little pieces of spring door to door. Pulling the wagon up to the end of each driveway along 25th Street Drive, I’d scoop up a bundle of the sticks, leaves, and acorns in my tiny hands and make the precarious trip up the drive to the front door, set down the pile on the stoop, then tenderly pick up each item, placing them into the mailboxes of my neighbors. I’d hit every house, a few dozen or so, before heading home. I have no memory of what inspired me to do this and if wasn’t for what came next I don’t imagine I would even remember that it happened at all.

One of our neighbors, having watched this tiny human put rocks and sticks into his mailbox, decided that I was committing a violation of the federal mailbox restriction law and called the police department who then came to my house.

This was the first time I’d been this close to a police officer and they meant business. I stood pinned against the back of my mother’s legs, paralyzed, squeezing my eyes tightly shut as they walked her through what happened. I remember vividly my terror and shame, the waves of regret crashing against a strong desire to run away forever. My mom was angry. Not knowing the events of my delivering spring that morning and likely feeling my fearful grip on her leg, she furiously vented to the two officers about my young age, that I wasn’t a trouble maker but a silly little girl doing silly little girl things. To their credit, the police saw past her anger and left without consequences for anyone besides a gentle reminder to not commit mail fraud in a neighborhood with touchy neighbors. It was after they left that I shared through a collapse of tears my side of the story. Mom held me and sent me to my room, a reward as I felt most at home there. This bore a coming-of-age story that my mom shares to this day with friends as proof my of innate indelible love for others.

The story being borne was the end for my mother and only the beginning for me.

My DNA evidence is all over this bad boy.

Alone in my room, I wept. The safety I felt in my neighborhood was gone. From this moment on I wandered farther from home, hung my head low, and rode my bike fast to escape my street. For years I would avoid talking to strangers and when they tried too hard to get to my level to talk with me I came back at them with anger. I was crippled to do new things alone, taking along my trusty lifelong buddy Evonne as a security blanket. I wouldn’t have had much of a childhood at all if it were not for the courage I took from Evonne.** I had learned that good intentions can be weaponized. Making an innocent mistake can be made a crime. Loving freely can come with consequences even when they aren’t obvious or handed down by law enforcement. I can keep feeling things after something happens and I may feel them alone. Sometimes adults just don’t understand.

Today I took a walk through our neighborhood and had many friendly salutations with neighbors, those I know by name and many only by a familiar face. I love where we live. Black Lives Matter flags fly on homes next to +rump signs, pristine yards next to cluttered yards yet we all co-exist in peace and support one another, sharing literal and proverbial cups of sugar. Today after one such neighborly wave, I looked down and found a perfect acorn resting on the ground. A flood of memories of that spring day came rushing back, but with it, something new. Instead of being brought back to the anger, resentment, and confusion at this neighbor’s reaction from my youth, I remembered what I felt like collecting spring that day. How it felt in my body to gather up beauty, the anticipatory buzz in my belly, the expansive joy that comes from giving to others. Collecting up the acorn today, rolling it around in my palm I felt the joy that silly little girl must have felt that spring day, alone with a red wagon wanting to share that awe with others.

This past week my BFF Sarah drove down from Portland to spend a much-needed, fast, and furiously happy 24-hours together. It was the first time we’d spent just the two of us since pre-pandemic. There was plenty of life’s X’s and O’s and the events from the past two years to catch up on. Instead, we found ourselves drawn deeper. We’re both nomads, transplants from Iowa with midwest “if you're old enough to walk, you’re old enough to work” sensibilities, spirited women of many passions who turned 40 this past winter to little fanfare and are feeling every inch of the mid-life crisis. Our crises are less of the ‘get a divorce, grow a beard, and buy sports car’ vibe and more of the ‘am I giving and living the life I want or someone elses’ and ‘oh shit, I for sure have unresolved trauma’ variety.

“I just feel lost.”

“Me too.”

I’ve said and written many times that when I feel lost, I just need to remember who I am and come home to it. What Sarah and I worked through together in real, hilarious, healing ways is that first, you must know where home is. For us, for most, it’s not the home of our childhood bedrooms or hometowns. As nomadic gypsy-spirited women like us, it’s not even our literal home. Those instincts of our childhood, of wanting to run away from danger, from fear, from apathy have been played out over and over again. Sure, we can pack up our lives and move again - away from this feeling of being lost, new friends, new roads - but now we’re not operating under any illusion that we, as we are, won’t be waiting for us wherever we arrive. Wherever you go, there you are.

The home we are searching for is the one within. It’s our core values and rituals. When a neighbor inevitably shits on my porch (um, let’s hope this is in the proverbial context***) I can come home to remember that the action of others is not a reflection of me, I can come home to my empathy, to my sense of humor, to my writing and story-telling passion, to loving-kindness meditation, to anger-cleaning the toilet my cat can see her face in it while she drinks. I don’t have to pack up all my shit and move.

As a solution to my being garbage at asking for what I need and resting, Sarah, the consummate teacher, wrote out a weekly plan titled Hayley Be Restin’ for me with tasks like “early bedtime” and “lay in the hammock”. Living my squad goals with this one.

Picking up the acorn today I remembered what it feels like to come home. I am that little girl and she is me. Now the process of returning can begin. This acorn will sit on the tiny altar of totems that evoke the simple and profound truths that I am never lost, but love is always here for me and always was.

Arbitrary footnotes:

**I would be lost without my female friendships. The women in my life, including the village of women that raised me, literally have saved my life. I will never be able to repay them - I can only love on other women as I was loved.

***While I have never pulled the prank of pooping in a bag then setting it on fire on a person’s porch, I have TP’d many a house in my day. Our neighbors on the next street over got TP’d yesterday and the TPers wrote in toilet paper “don’t mess with us”. That is next-level shit. Gotta admit, it still warmed my heart a little and now I’m kinda in the mood to bring TP’ing back as adults. You in?