Theories of Time and Space

Thoughts On Going Home

You can get there from here, though

there’s no going home.

-Natasha Trethewey

In her poem, Theories of Time and Space, United States Poet Laureate (2012 and 2013) Natasha Trethewey describes her experience going home to Gulfport, Mississippi. Trethewey’s words make me think about what it means to go home. Having lived in the far corners of the United States, being home holds special significance. Home is not a place from which I ran. It is a place to which I return.

Gulfport

The poem provides directions to Gulfport. Where to turn. What landmarks will appear along the way. How far things are. How long it will take. I appreciate that clarity. I never really had a map for my life that laid out a particular direction. I just always knew I needed to go and home would always be there. I moved to the Pacific Northwest after a phone call to AAA and an oil change. I moved to Texas with an acceptance letter to graduate school and the audacity of hope. I moved to Washington DC with a good job and the fire of my ambition. I moved to Cincinnati — close but still not home. I moved to Miami with my husband less than a month after we were married. All my directions headed away from home until I needed home.

Going Home

It is about the importance of dead ends, and the comfort of shrimp boat rigging when skies are threatening. It is about the parts of us that remain throughout the journey, and the pictures of us that stay when we leave. It is about buried mangrove swamps and tomes of memories. Trethewey cautions not to carry too much of the past, and that seems helpful in a forward-thinking-forgiveness-inspiring-grateful-living kind of way. She understands the complexity of home with the stubborn fog of memory that both haunts and comforts, the silent truth that hangs, the letters and receipts that live.

Directions

This poem makes sense to me. I have always been able to find directions that lead away from home. This poem suggests how to return. It gives me coordinates for my questions. It provides an explanation for why home is always where I return when I don’t know my way. Treathewey celebrates the details of home as familiar and important through a lens that includes geography and place. She also marks experience as significant. I believe that to be true with my entire being. I suspect she says there’s no going home because we are changed by every breath we take. Even with a map that takes us back to the exact place of our birth, our eyes see differently. Things are smaller. We get older. Our favorite places close. Friends and family pass away. The houses of our great grandparents, grandparents, and parents sell. Within that, some things really never change. The river still runs through it.

Home Changed

I am not sure when my understanding of home shifted, but at some point home changed from being somewhere I wanted to leave, to somewhere I am thankful to return. Maybe I was always thankful, but simply unaware. Home became more than a place. I realized I want family with me through grief and joy, defeat and success, change and calm. I learned this life is a precious gift when my grandparents passed. Home became about time and space.

Going Home Now

I learned about grounded theory in graduate school — theory that emerges from careful observation and data collection. My grounded theory of time and space understands a few things about home. Home is where I am seen. It is where I return, but never really leave. It is where I can be filled with fear and doubt and anger, and somehow remember everything falls apart and comes back together, again and again and again. It is where ritual courses through my veins, and morphs and flows with generations. It is where people love me at my best and worst and everything in between, and I love them with my whole heart. It is where I learned kindness and grace and service before I even knew what those words meant. It is where my cup is filled, especially when my thirst is great.