I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
“The Lake Isle of Innisfree” by W.B. Yeats
I remember my words, even if I can’t remember when I said them. Maybe it was before I left for college. More likely, it was a few years earlier when my family moved south for an 18-month hiatus in the sunny Carolinas.
I was talking to my dad. I think we were in the dining room in our old home, but I can’t say for sure. We were discussing how much I loved Maine and yet how willing I was to leave it and travel. “I want to leave Maine,” I told him, “so I can miss it.”
My dad laughed, but it wasn’t a mocking laugh. It was the surprised, delighted laugh he saves for when I say something he considers wise, a feeling he identifies with even if he hadn’t put it into words.
This summer, I spent five weeks at my parents’ home in Maine. After years of missing Maine, I’m now a traveler in the place where I belong. I go back with a dual perspective, that of someone who is owned by that place and that of someone who is discovering it afresh. I love this duality. It allows me to see home in a way that few others can. I delight in what delights the locals and tourists alike. I also sometimes hate this duality. I feel torn at times, uncertain of where we belong. Are we pilgrims or are we settlers?
For now the answer is that we are both. I love to wander but I always feel the call home “in the deep heart’s core,” as Yeats says. Always having home in my heart allows me to see new places as more than just a tourist. Each time I meet a new place, I try to understand what makes that place home to someone else.
The more I understand, the more each place feels a little bit more like my home. Maine always calls me, but I have a dozen homes in my heart now. Each one owns a little piece of me.
Sometimes we wander. And sometimes we wander home.
“Do not be too sad, Sam. You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole for many years. You have so much to enjoy and to be and to do.”
Frodo to Sam, The Return of the King
Words by Rachel Kaye. Photos by Ben.
