By Marek P. Zabriskie
My wife and I recently closed on our house in Philadelphia, where we lived there for 23 years and raised our three daughters. Our youngest has never known another home.
We chose to wait to sell it in the late spring so that our girls, could return for the holidays and enjoy a final Christmas at home. Christmas was more emotional than usual, knowing that we would never decorate a tree or hang stockings from the fireplace mantel in the same room.
We each had favorite places inside and outside the house. I loved lighting a fire in the living room fireplace, sitting down to read a book and waiting for one of our Pembroke Welsh Corgis to snuggle beside me seeking some attention.
One of our daughters loved to do artwork on the big marble counter top in the kitchen. Another enjoyed the quiet sanctuary of a bedroom removed from the hustle and bustle downstairs. My wife and I enjoyed the garden immensely.
Over the course of two decades we managed to create a lovely garden in the back of our house, where once there was a clay tennis court and where the clay was so pervasive that it nearly impossible for plants to survive. Slowly, we removed clay and added topsoil and created flower beds full of perennials and developed our own private world in back of the house.
We watched our girls dance on the terrace in ballet leotards and tiaras and dress up our older Corgi, Hollie, like a princess. She was unbelievably patient with our girls. When Hollie died, we buried her in the garden bed, which became a sanctuary in our minds – one more significant memory among so many.
A home is a haven. We give ourselves to it, decorate it, care for it and it provides a space where memories are made, relationships are deepened, friends are welcomed, family come and stay.
It’s the place where diapers are changed, disagreements occur, meals are cooked, homework is done, bills are paid and where we sleep and dream, laugh, cry, watch TV, assemble jigsaw puzzles and bake desserts while telling the stories of our lives.
Last Thursday, I took a final walk through of the house, opening each drawer and closest to check and ensure that the movers had left nothing behind. Every room was sacred space – from the den to the dining room, from the master bedroom to the front bay window, where I read my Bible each morning as sun filtered in through the towering trees and changing leaves.
All of it was sacred because the people who are most precious to me lived there and grew up there. This is the home where we learned to be a family, an imperfect family but a family indeed. We celebrated the milestones of our lives in this home and returned from wherever we were to celebrate our successes, mourn our losses and lick our wounds when we were hurt.
In the book of Genesis, God calls to Abram and Sarai to leave their home and family in Ur of the Chaldeans and depart to a new land called Canaan, where they were to make a new home. Such a call always involves sacrifice, leaving something precious and family behind – friends, family, a much-loved landscape and a home.
A move also involves a promise. The hope of a special new world that one day will be just as rich if not richer in memories, friends, special places and magical moments.
God told Abram, who had not been able to produce a child, that Sarai and he would become the ancestors of more children than the stars in the night sky, but first they had to give up what was so familiar and sacred and trust and take a huge risk and move and venture forth.
Our homes are holy ground for all of us. One of the most beautiful things that we can do is to open them to friends and family and invite others to share our sacred space and enjoy what is so profoundly meaningful to us and to become part of our family story in doing so.
A young new couple without children bought our home. They are excited to own it. They moved less than 24 hours after we signed the papers. It so final. The house was empty. We were out.
Suddenly, it would be filled with lots of boxes, different furniture and wonderful new owners. I hope that they will love it as much as we did, and take care of the garden that we put so much time and energy into creating.
I hope that they will enjoy the tranquility that we experienced sitting out on the terrace and watching the birds migrate to our feeders and hummingbirds moving silently through the air like arrows shot from a bow only to stop in midflight to imbibe sweet nectar.
As Dorothy said in the Wizard of Oz, “There’s no place like home.” It’s where our heart is.
In 1964, Dionne Warwick recorded Burt Bacharach’s song “A House is Not a Home.” In her silky voice she sang, “A house is not a home when there is no one there to hold you tight and no one there you can kiss goodnight.” What precious memories we have shared and will continue to make as we move forward.
The Rev. Marek Zabriskie, Rector of Christ Church Greenwich
