In search of a touchstone
I’ve often struggled to answer the question, where are you from?
“Well, I currently live in New Jersey…”
Do I mention I was born in St. Louis? I only lived there for a few months, yet so many of my core family memories, from holidays to vacations, are the result of visits back. Do I say Omaha, where I spent the majority of my childhood, even if my parents retired to North Carolina over a decade ago? I know I’m not from Chicago, yet those four years were some of the most formative of my life. Sprinkle in five years in Boston and eight in New York City, and well, it’s complicated.
Recently I’ve found myself growing jealous of family and friends that have childhood homes to return to. Or if not the same home, a neighborhood, or town. While I could still visit my brother who lives in Omaha with his family, we tend to see each other at my parent’s house or on vacations. New Jersey is home for now, but will we stay here forever? Given that I haven’t lived in the same state for more than eight years since I was 18, it’s hard to imagine living anywhere forever.
Not having a memory-filled home base never really bothered me before. I’ve enjoyed living all over, experiencing and getting to know different parts of the country. It’s exciting, new, and different, all of which I have a history of gravitating toward.
But lately I’ve been craving something simpler, something known: a touchstone. If not a pencil-marked doorway marking time through inches grown, then a familiar landscape or piece of furniture. Something or someplace I can return to that reminds me who I was, where I can from, and all I’ve been through to get to where I am today. Somewhere or something that has endured alongside me, through all the rockets and parachutes of my life and will continue to be a part of my future.
Maybe it’s middle age talking, or it’s the middle of what is proving to be an epically long year (eff you cancer). But in order to focus forward, to accept whatever asteroids will inevitably crater my perfectly laid plans, I need to physically be somewhere I’ve been many times before. I need to remember.
When it comes to places I’ve visited, there is only one location I have returned to in every stage of life: Macatawa, Michigan. I haven’t been every year, have never owned a home there, and I haven’t even stayed in the same house each time I’ve visited. But the view never changes.
The glittering water reflecting the sun as it moves through the sky before dipping under the salmon-colored horizon. Going to sleep and waking up to the sound of the waves reaching the shore - their ferocity dependent on whatever weather has recently moved through. The breeze off the water that has masked the suns heat more times than my poor shoulders and nose care to count. And while the shape of the dunes and the length of the beach may change, the two-centuries old cottages remain, standing sentinel over the great lake at their feet. A veritable time capsule.
Macatawa isn’t home, but in a transient life filled with more unpredictable turns than I could have imagined, it is my touchstone.
My St. Louis grandparent’s best friends owned a cottage in Macatawa which is how my pilgrimages there began as an infant. I would return with regular irregularity throughout my child and young adulthood until I eventually returned with my own infant thirty years after I had first felt the dredged-up sand between my toes and saltless air on my face.
A lone constant amidst the ever-shifting sands of my life.
And next week I get to return.
This trip could not come at a better time. More than ever I need to remind myself of my inherent strength and resilience. While this year’s cancer diagnosis has been physically managed, I’m only just beginning to reckon with the emotional toll. I will be ok. I know this, because I always have been. But going into this fall, with the release of The Luckiest, a wildly vulnerable memoir, I could use a reminder of the badass I have been and continue to be. Of the silly and fun and relaxed and competitive and chatty and driven woman that exists within me, buried underneath these mastectomy scars.
For the next couple weeks, I will be looking for her along the water's edge where I once built sandcastles with my Mimi, and then my brother, and then Jackson and Anessa. And on walks to the big red lighthouse where I used to adventure with cousins and later with Adelaide strapped to my chest. And then as I watch the sunset, the popsicles of my youth traded in for a beer. As a result, I’ll be taking the next couple weeks away from the blog. I hope to return to you more centered and grounded having been reminded through memories at my touchstone of all I have been and will continue to be.
ID 1: Kelly, hair in a braid, is standing next to Jackson (age 5) who is flying a kite. Tabasco, a small white fluffy dog is at his feet with his mouth open. They are both smiling. They are standing on a beach with a blue, white-capped lake behind them and a red lighthouse in the distance. (2017)
ID 2: Kelly, age 2, wearing a string bikini is being held on her Aunt Sally’s hip. Sally is a young adult and smiling while looking at Kelly, her blonde hair in a braid matches the color of Kelly’s bowl cut. They are standing on the beach with the lake and trees behind them. (1984)
