September 4th marks my birthday. My parents (sort of) jokingly called me the accident rather than the surprise. Coming six plus years after the birth of my closest sibling, they thought their “baby having” years had passed. Once the shock dimmed, I’m pretty sure that I was wanted and loved, but most everything of reference and consequence put me in my place with the phrase, “before you were born.” Even our dog, Skippy, was more tenured than me.

I was born on Labor Day Monday of 1967. Dr. Pishko, who delivered my siblings and a bushel of my cousins, drew a vial of blood out of my mom’s left arm and injected it into her right to speed along my arrival into the world. Her version of the story was that the arm-to-arm transfusion worked so well that she almost delivered me in an elevator. 

Meanwhile, back at home, Daddy was readying my siblings for the new school year. It was my brother Jeff’s debut into first grade. (He still begrudges me for being born, causing him to be the only kid whose dad took him to Carthage Elementary on the first day. Dads are more involved now. This was 1967 and our father wasn’t, nor would have ever been, the drive you to school, wipe your slobber, hold your backpack kind of dad.) Jeff’s rendition of his opening day of education trauma has become enhanced and exaggerated over the years. We talked last week, and he shared the new and improved 2021 rendition of his story in celebration of the upcoming anniversary of my birth.

Jeff remembering September 4, 1967, “Yep, there I was, six-years-old, and Bill (our dad,) bummed a cigarette from me, ate half of the no meat, mayonnaise sandwich from my lunch box, downshifted his truck into second gear and instructed me to open the door and jump.” As Jeff tucked and rolled, Bill shouted through the window, “Get the hell into that schoolhouse and claim you some learnin’.”

Jeff semi-joshes that his first two times in rehab were about finding a way to forgive me for being born, snatching his God-given birthright and role as the revered youngest. 

Drama king. Geez.

While I don’t remember being born, the stories around my birth always provide me a sense of identity and twisted kind of comfort. When I was released from the infant care of Dr. Pishko and unloaded into the worn, wooden crib in the little brick house on Lamms Road, I was home. I never had another formal residence until I went to sleep away school eighteen years later. I lived five miles west of Carthage, the baby girl child of Bill and Jean.

Our immediate and extended family is, in both nature and nurture, strong and tribal. I have fond memories of old country churches and Homecoming Sundays, complete with gospel singing and dinner on the grounds. We went to those Homecomings, stretching across miles in central and upper Moore county. Dover Baptist Church was always my favorite. I am sure the religion stuck in some nook of my heart, but mostly I remember Judy Brewer playing the piano and the food. My Aunt Ruth made hot dogs with chili and slaw and then wrapped them individually in wax paper. I cannot describe the magic in that slightly soggy deliciousness, but I could eat one, or three, right now. My parents walked the graveyards and remembered the dead, running respectful hands over smooth stones, sighing over the day that our people had been called home.

Most of the folks at those Homecomings have stones of their own now. I only go back to those churches for funerals, but I walk the cemeteries and sigh, just as I was taught.

Smokin Hot Love Biscuit and I kept my parents’ old farm and house after they passed on. The bank account, insurance policy, and power bill designate it as the “homeplace.” It’s the best way to refer to it. I love being there. Most every week, strangers make cash offers, stating that it is a sought-after spot, being on the fringe of the equestrian area of Southern Pines and golf mecca of Pinehurst. When I was young, it was remote nowheresville, but now it’s become bougie. I reckon Boondocks is the new Fringe. I decline their offers. 

SHLB and I made a pair of new friends last year. The couple splits their time between land in Colorado and afloat along the eastern U.S. coastline aboard their Outer Reef, “Favorite Child.” These are beautiful, warm people. They’re the kind of folks you slip into a relationship with like an old pair of Levi’s. They are authentic and open. They docked in Beaufort last weekend and when we saw them, they gave us tight, bear hugs. The wife, Betsy, announced, with great enthusiasm, “We’re home.”

That statement made me so happy. Being among friends, building relationships, connecting, and including others, making a community where you are, that is so much of what love and belonging symbolize for me – what home feels like.

Later in the weekend, a group of friends made a Shibumi City on Shackleford Banks, one of the public, barrier islands on Cape Lookout National Seashore.. The group was an eclectic blend of people from assorted places and walks of life. It struck me as I eavesdropped on conversations and laughter, that we can find common ground with most humans, that we can all be neighbors in one way or another. John Donne wrote, “No man is an island.” True. And, you can circle your vessels on the banks of one and make it a place of revival, where even new friends can come home.

A commonly used word, there’s even a product called Home – and they had the audacity to copyright it, as though they are the only homeowners. There are home pages, home screens, home sites and home bases. There’s homegrown and homemade and hometown. There are homing pigeons and homing devices and homing beacons. We keep the home fires burning and the home team winning and the homeland secure. We crave some home cooking and like to sip on a little home brew. There’s home schooling and working from home. I’m a fan of home girls and home slices and possibly the GOAT, home fries. 

No wonder the desire to hitch a marketing wagon to the idea of home. Disney says, “Welcome home,” when you check into their resorts. It makes me tear up every damn time, as does the fireworks show at Epcot. Disney home is little and large, both tangible brick and mortar and earth-sized belief.  

I am wiggly and restless by nature. I’m married to a self-proclaimed wanderer. The first part of our wedded bliss, we kept two houses to preserve our sanity as we blurred the lines and blended our lives. We live together under one-two roofs now. (Full disclosure: SHLB is in the Man Cave as I write this.) I’ve noticed as I age and mature into a truer version of who I am, that when I feel at home, I feel free. I sleep well. I lower my guard. I feel safe. I think positive, clear thoughts. I’m just me. In the words of my friend, Allison, who served the Peace Corps in Namibia, “Home is wherever I am.” 

Perhaps like the turtle, I tote my house around with me, making home the inward and outward place where I dwell and welcome others.