Now he sits on the back of the couch, feet planted firmly on the windowsill, hands pressed against the glass, yelling out the colors of the cars as they whiz by. At two, he is still fascinated by that which moves, and how can squirrels compete with mini-vans? I want more for my son than sidewalks and parking lots and shopping, but his guides are as ignorant as he is, and more homeless.
My biggest worry is that this child of mine is growing up in a city, surrounded by asphalt and cable wires. Named for a bird and the forest, Silas Raven is so far away from the pleasures of their acquaintance. Living as we do, scraping by on barely enough, because both of us want to enjoy and share and guide his childhood, sometimes feels short-sighted. Shouldn't we be working, making money as quickly as we can, investing in his future? I want to live in the country, both for my child and myself, and yet we can't afford to move. Wouldn't a couple of years in day-care be okay for the ultimate end of financial clout--enough to gain a mortgage? I can't bring myself to lose his baby years, and yet I feel guilty for not giving Silas the freedom of country living--to run without fear, to explore wild places and make them his own, to enjoy all the tumultuous messy exuberance of life. I want it for myself too. I want an emotional and spiritual connection to the land. I want to inhabit a place. I want my child to grow up taking that kind of connection for granted instead of searching for it when he's thirty.
But where is that mythical place of friendly folks and honest work? Of natural beauty and healthy community? The country around here is big farms and dying villages. We, Silas' parents, are rootless folks, except for the little tendrils we've put down in this town. Both from anonymous suburbs, both children of immigrants whose stories lie in different lands. Any stories we have are the ones we're making up as we go. There are no places for us to be connected to, no family farm to inherit, no small town to return to, no home except the one we've made--here--in this place--a very urban sprawling place. Is this home? Without wilderness, without history? I can't seem to make connections to this land--they must be getting fried in the hydro lines.
Silas is unperturbed by worry, by guilt, by homelessness. His first summer he would sit in the garden and plunge his sturdy arms into the earth as if he were trying to root himself down, down, down. Hands would come up filled with soil, leaves, roots, ants, clutching it all to his chest, then scattering it like raindrops. Then he'd raise his hands above his head, a triumphant hello to the universe. I'm here, he said, every time.
Now that he can talk with words as well as body, every activity of note, from going to pee to the cats' eating is reported with equal weight, to mothers, to fathers, to friends, to himself. Every comment whispered quietly again and again, a chorus of remembrance. Not just to learn language but to learn life. Nona's making cookies. Nona's making cookies. Marc, Nona's making cookies. Pass it on. Pass it on.
In among the sidewalks and the buildings and the cars he finds important things. Rocks. Chestnuts. Leaves. Feathers. Pine cones. All are exclaimed over. Some come home with us. Rocks from beaches, gardens, driveways, playgrounds. All the chestnuts he can carry. Leaves clutched in one hand--flags waving. He holds them tight and lets them go a second later. "Easy, easy go," he tells me. Or brings them home to give to a father, presenting them with a quick carelessness as if duly passing on a message and now his work is done. Nature comes in and out of the house with nonchalance.
Silas has no problem making a home out of asphalt and flowers. After all, mice live in our walls, and squirrels live in the attic. He's eaten carrots straight out of the ground and pulled tomatoes off their vines. He's bought crackers at the store and samosas at the farmer's market. For him it all fits. All he has to do is pay attention and pass it on. His whole being is taken up with gathering and sorting information and experience and sharing it with the rest of the world. Pay attention and pass it on. Silas makes himself at home in this place I consider no place.
What is home anyway, but that intricate cobweb of relations between you and place and people and history and future? Isn't it made where you are every day, by what you do? Doesn't home get made in spite of yourself, by where you put your energies, by where you make your connections? Isn't just feeling at home someplace an accomplishment in our hyper-mobile society? Most people make their home through television, malls, and stuff--limiting their sense of home to tenuous connections with inanimate objects. I may not like this place--I may feel the lack of history, feel the lack of wildness, and feel injured by its ugliness--but I have made myself a home here, of sorts. My feet know these streets. And isn't nature always present, maybe just in the cracks in the sidewalks and the wind in the trees, but here if you pay attention? Silas reaches out to both the life and the asphalt, making everything shine. Why can't I?
Will it last? Will his connections with trees and garden and school buses survive? I don't know. Eventually his horizon is going to expand; perhaps then a few flowers won't be enough to ground him. Perhaps the concrete won't appear so friendly. He's certainly going to notice his parents only feel partly at home here; that we're not so happy with the construction and the cars. Will Silas Raven come to expect more than half-a-home? I hope so. I hope so.
What's the difference between being at home in nature, and nature being in your home? Can you have one without the other?
Standing on the couch, staring out the window, he reaches his arm around my neck and pulls me in for a hug. "Going to rain soon," he informs me looking up at the grey sky. "Going to rain soon. Going to rain soon." Then "fire engine!" as he hears the distant sirens. "Fire engine." "Fire engine."
I think what he is trying to tell me, is that just being at home in the world, whatever it is, wherever it is, is enough for now. Just pay attention and pass it on. Pass it on. Easy, easy go. Silas, Nona, and Marc at home. At home. Pass it on.
fiona heath is a writer and educator living in Waterloo, Ontario. A regular contributor to the regional publication WholeLife, she is currently developing a local study circle guide on simple living. She has a master's in environmental studies from York University where she focused on the experience of home in the western world.
©2000 Talking Leaves
Spring/Summer 2000
Volume 10, Number 1
Listening to Elders and Children