There and Back Again

I had intended to write this week’s post about a naval action in the late 19th century. But as I’m also preparing to give a lecture later this week at the Margaret Chase Smith Library and Foundation on “The Criteria for Naval Victory in the Pacific: World War 2 and Today,” I needed a break from the navy and politics and thought I’d let the lecture handle those (apparently it will be recorded so I can post it.) Instead, this week’s post is about something that is mundane but perhaps because it is so commonplace (or not) it has intrinsic and necessary value, much like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, since this one might find a place in each of his stages.

In what is arguably one of the best-written Star Trek screenplays, Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner) is walking with Edith Keeler (played by Joan Collins) along a street during the Great Depression. She turns to him and says, “let me help.” He responds, “Let me help. A hundred years or so from now, I believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. He'll recommend those three words even over I love you.”

But if there is one word that may be even greater than that, it is this: “home.”

Admittedly, I don’t watch Hallmark Christmas movies - those who know me how I really feel about them. Much has been written in literature or popular movies about “home.” There was E.T. who just wanted to get back to his fellow alien. Dorothy wanted to leave Oz for Kansas. There is a reason for that, as Joseph Campbell suggests in “The Hero’s Journey,” the common themes in ancient poems and stories or those of the modern era in which an individual reluctantly leaves home and the long struggle to return is an essential element, probably best told in Homer’s Odyssey who throughout his journey talks of home in Ithaca. To King Alcinous Odysseus asks, “Oh just let me see my lands, my serving-men and the grand high-roofed house.”

The same is echoed in the movie Gladiator as the Emperor Marcus Aurelius asks Maximus (Russell Crowe), “how can I reward Rome’s greatest general.” Maximus responds, “Let me go home.” All Maximus thinks about is seeing his family and walking through his wheat fields.

In JRR Tolkien’s universe, both Bilbo Baggins and his nephew Frodo keep reflecting on their home in the Shire only to find some disruption (in the case of Bilbo’s household goods having been sold off) or disaster (when Frodo and his three companions return to find that the Shire has been destroyed by Saruman, it’s quaint and comfortable gardens and trees all displaced by industrialized mills.

Fundamental to John Lange’s “Tarnsman of Gor” series was the “Home Stone,” something common to each hut, village, town and state. Something that represented the core of the family or of the community.

Nearly 34 years ago I moved from New England to take a job in Washington DC, thinking that I’d return in “two or three years.” I lived in many places especially in the first decade with renting and roommates. Even the houses I owned in Virginia and later Maryland were just that - houses, not homes. Though I returned regularly and spent nearly every summer in the same cottage in a little village on the coast of Maine to write my books or parts of my doctoral dissertation, it would be more than thirty years before I returned.

Part of that journey was my time in the Navy Reserve with activated assignments in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere. That was where I learned about “Channel Fever” from the more experienced officers - that time in the final few days as your ship is returning from deployment to home. My final mobilization, to Guantanamo Bay, a largely colorless base who primary fauna are miniature deer, lizards, and banana rats and whose flora is the dull browns and tans evident year-round due to the lack of rain (I think it rained for a few minutes four or five times in my ten months there.) All I wanted to do when I returned was plant gardens around my house to see things grow and to appreciate color again. That was the first thing I did when I returned to the United States.

I left a fantastic job earlier this year teaching the next generation of naval officers in order to accept another position in Maine (the story of which will be told elsewhere.) But to take the position, I had to buy a house. After many misses, I finally hit on one, a two-hundred-year-old home in a coastal town whose residents have included ship captains, merchants, and master ship riggers. I spent the next few months restoring it - removing old wallpaper and carpets, exposing the horse-hair plaster walls and the original wood floors. It’s been repainted and the necessary work done to make this look like what it once might have been.

The historian in me wondered about it and in the course of my research in old newspapers I’ve found nearly every person who has lived in this home since 1840. I’ve even visited some of their local graves as I walked my dog in the cemetery. A few are still here - as ghosts who drop by from time to time.

I’m just the steward of this home, recognizing that it has been the place of births and deaths, of funerals and wedding receptions, of occupations long-since past and those yet to be imagined. This has become home, and along with it the people - of nearby lifelong friends and new ones, and of family who remained close to the state’s home stone.

As the Christmas season is now upon us, I hope that you are enjoying your home, or at least the journey - your own hero’s journey - which will inevitably result in your finding that home or returning to it.