Antiquarian

Sometimes I think the concept of home exists only in the past. I left, in search of different people and traditions to call home. Pick up a friend here, a new tradition there. I keep my life in boxes, ready to move at a moment’s notice. I hang my hat at a temporary address.

It’s a quiet night. I went to the grocery store to buy pasta for dinner, because all we have in the house is cookies and hard liquor. Rain had fallen, making the air swollen and dreary. I wandered into the frozen food aisle to find something to snack on, and ended up trailing the path of a scrawny, middle-aged man with long dirty hair an empty shopping cart. I caught the humid scent of pot in my nostrils, and it took me somewhere else. Back to high school, sitting next to the mysterious stoner in class I knew only by his French name (Pierre). Kissing my first boyfriend, who wouldn’t stop smoking even when I begged. Sprawled out on the lawn at a summer concert, reveling in the crowd’s collective lack of responsibility.

I watched the man struggle between Stouffer’s TV dinners and Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and lost my taste for pizza rolls. I wondered what home was for him. Maybe a trailer in the park on the edge of town, or maybe the old underground railroad house near the square. Maybe he works in one of the factories. He might be one of the owners of that left-wing vintage clothing store with walls covered in lyrics of The Rolling Stones songs and heavy hemp ponchos and posters with the president’s face pasted onto the head of a chimp. I know this town. I’m not sure it knows me.

We’re not really looking for new homes, I guess. We’re looking for old ones. We sift through memories of our childhood like miners panning for gold, filtering out dull pieces and pocketing the ones that still gleam brightly. And then we spend our whole lives looking for people to share it with, people who have precious metals lining their pockets, too. Because that’s home: shaking hands with someone who knows what you’re carrying. Someone who knows how to love you.

I paid for my pasta with quarters and offered a sheepish shrug to the clerk before re-entering the night, wet and silent and still. I allowed my mind a vague and fleeting fear of being assaulted as I shoved the key into the lock to my apartment and heard it click open. Carpet, lights, television. Sparsely decorated walls.

Home is where I boil my pasta.