The craft was intended to be a warm object with appreciable sentimental value -- one of those pieces that "makes a house a home." But I never liked it. To my mother, it was a symbol of love, peace, and clarity; to me, it was a glaring symbol of mediocrity. It appeared to me as if an artist sat down one day and pondered how to best capture what it looks like when life gets boring.
A flood happened in my village a couple years ago, and its waters swept away the girl, seemingly permanently. My mother spent months discovering lost garden decorations buried in the garden, some ours and some belonging to the neighbors, but the girl had escaped permanently.
My mother lamented, but I quietly cheered. The girl had moved on. I fantasized about her eloping with a burly garden gnome, or maybe she was alone, trying to rediscover the excitement life had to offer before she got married to a boy in a straw hat and hitched herself to a cream white wooden sign to be ridiculously exhibited in the garden of a middle-class American family.
The truth is that I'm afraid of the phrase I used to give this post a title. "Home Sweet Home" doesn't conjure up any warm images of fireplaces and tree swings. I imagine an endless winter in which the only things to get up for are work and bill payment deadlines. That life terrifies me.
It's enough for many people. Making a family, buying a modest home, covering it in pumpkin-scented candles in autumn and windsocks with pastel blue skies and puffy white clouds in spring.
I can't imagine how.
