Place Makes You
This past week marked my late husband's birthday and death anniversary. They're only a week apart. It's always the hardest week of the year for me and this year it also included celebrating our niece's wedding (which Ed was kind to attend with me), but also the funeral of our childhood pastor.
Even though they moved years ago, they held the funeral here which created a beautiful reunion. We all came back home to the love of our people, some of whom I hadn't seen in over 40 years, but also back to our dirt.
Just like their family, I had a driving need to go home after Dan died too. Dan and I grew up less than 10 miles apart and met on the first day of church camp at 8 years old. I knew him for 40 years. We have some fragments of extended family in the area, and a few very dear friends, but in that moment, I just knew I needed to get back to that dirt, especially the lake.
It was as if I needed to go home to mark the start of a new life for myself before I was even conscious. My life, as I knew it, ended the moment he died, but I had no idea that's where my new life was about to start.
I wonder about this deep connection to place. Is this what drives the salmon to come back to their river in the fall? Is it their driving need to make it back to the river from which they spawned, to fight the current and swim to utter exhaustion just to spawn and die? The new life takes root in that river and will leave until it's time for the next generation of fish to return, spawn, and die, continuing the cycle for years and years to come.
I stumbled into this phenomenon parked next to a little river that empties into Lake Michigan so I could watch the birds. I come down multiple times a day to this spot and on this particular day, I noticed a few strange splashes in the river that I had to investigate. There were dozens and dozens of salmon running the river. I could reach right down and pull one out of the water with my bare hands if I wanted to. They were huge and tired and already some of them were dead or near dead.
I felt as if I had stumbled onto a sacred secret as I'd never seen anything like it! What a privilege to witness it! Did my neighbors even know what was happening?
I took a quick video and posted to my Facebook account so it would remind me every year to go check the river and see if the fish are running. It worked as I've managed to catch it several years running now. I feel the same sense of awe every year.
I follow an account on Instagram called Nabalo and they once posted the following:
Cynefin: (kun-ev-in) A place where one feels it ought to live and belong, where nature embraces and whispers its welcome.
Etymology: In Welsh culture, cynefin carries a deep sense of place and belonging, it's a concept that embodies a strong connection to the land and the feeling of being at home in a particular place, the word is linked to the old Welsh word cenedl, which means nation or tribe
I had a visceral response to that post as it named something I had no words for and no way to communicate.
I went back and forth to Michigan by myself many times that first year, often for weeks or months at a time. It was my safe place, a refuge. And little did I know, but at the end of that first year, I accidentally started dating my now husband, Edwin. Ed was raised on a farm just down the road from my dirt too. He too had gone away for work and then the lake called him back just like me. Much to my shock, I moved back. We now live about 1000 yards off Lake Michigan.
This place gave me two great loves and started my two great lives. This water healed me. It's in every cell of my body. And now, this place birthed me as a painter and it weaves its way into each and every one of my paintings. This place is me and I am it. On the actual anniversary of his death, I made a powerful painting to represent his death that just flowed, the most perfect name for it made its way to me, and I celebrated his life with the Perseid meteor showers and the northern lights danced. This place is magic and my heart is full.
