Coming home

I’m a writer. That means I spend a lot of time alone. In many cases, at home. My wife, Gaywynn, has a job, and she leaves the house in the morning at 8:30 and comes home about 5. It’s just the two of us in this house.

We live out in the country, so if I don’t go to town and work in a coffee shop, it’s just me and the dog and the cat—all day. I’m by myself. After I finish writing, in late morning, I do have things I have to do. There are always things to fix in our house, which is old and keeps reminding us of that. During the day, though, I miss my wife. I’m glad she’s happy doing what she’s doing, but at times throughout the day, I miss her.

So when Gaywynn’s car pulls up the long driveway at around 5, and she gets out and comes to the door, my heart leaps up, as they say. I’m so glad to see her. She has a beautiful smile, and seeing it warms me, and everything is all right. She’s back home. We’re here together.

This makes me think of other times when women I’ve known have experienced this moment in different ways. In ways that weren’t always so happy.

I think of my mother who after she married my father moved from Ohio where she lived to Virginia where he lived. It was the late 1940s. A different world! She encountered a new and strange place. She didn’t know a soul except for my father. They had three children within eleven months—me, first, and then twins, my brother and sister.

When my father left for work in the morning, she was there by herself in the house with three young children, alone. If you’ve been in a similar situation, you know how difficult that can be. So the moment my father returned and opened the door was one that she waited for all day, a moment that could turn a stressful, exhausting day into bliss. That moment could make up for a lot.

I’m thinking of all the mothers, like mine, in the 1940s and 1950s who waited for their husbands to come home. They applied lipstick and brushed their hair, took off aprons and made themselves as beautiful as they could. They just wanted that door to open and have their man there, once again, home. Because then you had the two of you against the world. You were together.

Then my father began coming home late and later, and my mother’s wait became longer and harder to bear. She took solace in drink and then things began to get bad. I’m not trying to pin their problems on a single daily moment—who really knows what happens between two people?—but I think it’s emblematic, it dramatizes a relationship. Things dulled between them, they argued, there were tears. They divorced. Then my mother never waited for anyone to come home again.

The roles may be reversed between us, but that powerful moment is the same. That moment when each of us thinks, it was worth it, whatever mess I had to deal with today, whatever low points I had, whatever failures. Because you’re home. We’re together. I’m so happy to see you, and we can deal with whatever it is. Throw most anything at us, and we’re good for it.

You’d be so nice to come home to, Cole Porter wrote. It is, and I want to protect that.