La Querencia, a Spanish word difficult to translate, but it invokes a space of sanctuary. In the story
Racing Through Paradise, William F. Buckley says, “
The word doesn't translate. It is used in Spanish to designate that mysterious little area in the bullring that catches the fancy of the fighting bull when he charges in. He imagines it his sanctuary: when parked there, he supposes he cannot be hurt. The role of the matador then is to move the bull out of his secured spot."
It is a spot where a dog can sleep, tummy exposed to the sun. It's that secret place where antelope graze without fear and a redhead can sleep protected and safe. It's a point in space where an eagle can soar above the trees and an elk can fight to the death or his dominion. It's a place where one can make a fresh start, or a last stand. In the bullring, it’s called Querencia, and its translation is as diverse as the enigma of its existence.
For me, it's just a little Mission Bungalow built exactly one hundred years ago.
The house I grew up in wasn't a huge place, only one bathroom that had a tub, requiring a schedule worthy of a battle commander on early mornings. There was just one other smaller bath with a sink and a toilet off the garage for us to come in and clean up after we tinkered with tools and cars.
I had my own room, being the only girl in the family, with a window that looked out onto an apple tree that since has been cut down. I climbed out of that window more than once, dropping into the darkness on the ground in silence. Not to sneak out and party or any other mischief the other kids were up to, but to simply get out of the house, out into the outdoors, sitting on the grass out back, watching the stars on those nights when I was restless. I'd think of things that I'd dream of, if only I could sleep. A small tidy home and shop of my own someday, a good man, a big dog and all the chocolate I could eat.
But as life renews itself, so do dreams. Living with just Barkley in a humongous house, full of expensive things I had to work doubly hard to pay for, coming home late to the one that patiently waited, something dawned on me one night. My dog Barkley didn't care where we lived, what we owned, or who would judge us for that. All he knew was unbridled living in the moment and following your heart. He appreciated the things that held no form, that bore no name, the glint of sun off of a pond, a walk in the woods, one last look at the night sky as the stars finally fade. As we walked and Barkley went into full point on a plastic deer in someones yard in that old subdivision, I thought how he has also was pointing me to the things that matter in life - loyalty, devotion and love without strings attached.
So I sold it, at a significant financial loss with the market tanking, but I didn't care. I wanted a life where I still worked hard, but work wasn't what defined me. wanted a
home, a house that looks less like a magazine and more like a life, the sort of place my Dad would smoke a pipe in, with high wooden beams, old tools and a place to use them, a house for a writer, a retreat for the dreamer.
People say that with change we grow. I'm not so sure I see it quite that way, but rather that we become what we always were, but had changed, molded or kept hidden to satisfy others. Changing our true nature to fit some preconceived notion of how the happy, successful person would live, or with whom. With the changes in my life, with each friendship I've made and maintained over time, people more like myself, and less like who I was expected to spend time with, I'd become more true to myself. It's as if with each change, whether with loss or with happiness, with challenge, with new friends and new discoveries, the layers peel way like thin skin of an onion, exposing nerve endings to the chill air, awakening something that lay dormant for too long.
With that in mind, I simply loaded up that car with what I could carry, my dog in the backseat, happy simply to be where I was, with whatever changes came. We wandered, he and I, until we found what was for us, home.
When I showed a professional associate the picture for the place that would finally become home with my husband, I was met with "
you're going to LIVE there? It's so small!! If I had your income, I'd be buying one of those big houses on the lake. Where are you going to shop? What are your neighbors going to think".
You know, I really don't CARE what the neighbor's think. I quit changing who I was to conform to society a long time ago, a foreigner to the immutable laws that TV and greed seem to have placed upon people. I simply wanted to come home and grab a tennis ball and go play with my dog in the yard. I didn't want to come home to a huge cavernous dwelling where I rattled around with the stranger I was becoming, heaving and sighing with the work of keeping that life up, uttering the sounds of someone engaged in a battle without arms.
My first summer here, the air was still warm with life and need. I looked around, I looked down at small things, green plants enduring in hard ground to find light and air, like stars amidst a night sky. I looked up straight into the sun, and for that brief moment, when I must turn away, I could see a pure clear circle, illuminating everything. I saw my shadow, and that of a black Lab, with a shape that was us, yet didn't define us, simply a form, in this place in time, following what was truly within us, wherever we went.
Life in essence, remains the same, even as it changes, these existing things have always been true. It's a small flower, small spots of fresh life, unheard poetry on the hidden side of a planet spinning in space. It's an articulated bark of welcome, it's the wag of a tail. It's darkness, light, and a great thirst to quench before winter's darkness is one of permanence, things you can not hold, but which fill up empty spaces in a life much better than material possession.
What would we be, were we shed of all those material things, of our possessions, our titles, of our names? The things in the forest have no name, they have no earthly riches, yet they still exist; they still are profound in their creation. The creatures of the forest have no titles, and survive based on skill and cunning, not their credit limit or the car they drive. The plants grow and thread and seek light, just as man, when shedding that which is unnecessary, sees the light that is often truth.
On the wall of my Dad's shop area is a old picture of a bullfight. One he bought for the house as a newlywed which Mom took one look at and sent to the garage. We teased him a lot about it, and just looking at it brought he and my mom to laughter that ended with a kiss and a knowing smile. Yet, in looking at it today, I see the bull, not as a shape, with form and depth, a mass of muscle and bone inherent with the capacity to hurt, but simply a creature knowing what it needed, and willing to sacrifice so very much to keep it.
Behind his house, where deer once wandered down from the mountains, delicate and untouchable as smoke, leaving only tender footprints in the flower beds to mark their passing, stands a Big Box Mart or two, that blot out what is left of the timber and much of the sun. I remember my Dad watching them cut down the trees, with eyes like pieces of a broken plate, steadfast in his refusal to sell, as most of the neighbors did. This house is his home, a dwelling where he raised his kids and outlived two beloved wives, a place he will only leave when he ceases to breathe, the fight in him, only then, having flown away.
My room he has kept, just as it was in my youth. The walls are still yellow, my favorite color, a few stuffed animals in the corner, a poster on the closet door, a music stand.
Mom's kitchen is unchanged but for the refrigerator, once covered with childlike artwork, now laid bare. The wall behind it in the family room that once framed drawings from grade school and ribbons from the science fair is now covered with commendations and more complex ribbons, pictures of airplanes and submarines and the
children of the family, proudly swearing an oath to their country in a solemn moment of choice and service, each and every one of us.
Many of the memories there in his home are happy ones, some are bittersweet. There are the small ceramic things my Mom made, still carefully dusted years after she was dust herself. There is the teddy bear by my bed, showing the signs of wear from when I came home from the hospital without my daughter and cried myself to sleep in his fur night after night, while my Dad listened, helpless in the next room, wanting only for me to be happy again.
When I walk in, those memories remain, though they are dampened by the years, overlaid with other memories of happiness. As they say, you can't go home again, but we, by our nature, try. It changes, and it doesn't, it's the warmth of a kitchen, a flag flying out front, old tools in the garage and the skills passed on by a Father. It's four walls and new family members who will gather and remember those who are gone.
In those first weeks after Barkley left us, I would step up the steps up to my own porch. I wanted desperately to hear the soft "woof" as Barkley waited in the kitchen for me to step in. But I could only walk in, in that utter quiet that was now the house, sensing those who were absent who inhabited this place but existed now as only ghosts of my past, living on the breath of memory.
I stood outside the door, hearing hushed wind, hand on the doorknob, hesitant to open the door to every memory, hesitant more, to leave them behind. I stood there silently, my presence not detected by dogs forever silent, motionless, trying to blend in with the house, the dark wood and trees, listening to the living presence of a home, all the lives and love and heartache that went into it, that formed these four walls, that now formed me.
I listened, as a churchgoer does, to chants in ancient languages that no one understands, but listens to anyway, the words a peace that flows like water. There was no bark but that of the trees, and the baleful sound of a wind that spoke the name of one departed. I listened for things I'd dreamed of, if only I could sleep.
I opened up the door to go on in. I had no words for what I was feeling. I had no name for the quiet that waited inside. But that was OK. There are no words for the shafts of light between the trees, of the unity of earth and roots and small creatures that are born and die as food for the soil. There are no names for the rocks that direct a streams flow, for the fur and leaves that line an eagle's nest. Yet they are, and always will be. Strong. Necessary. Waiting.
- LB Johnson
