Hate is a Place when you go there, they have to take you out. 

Apologies to Robert Frost who wrote:

“Home is a Place when you go there, they have to take you in.”

That line was a sticky note on my heart through young adulthood, when after leaving home, I returned, and re-turned, again and again; rebellious and righteous—yet always loved, not always understood, though. 

But descending from hard-working dawn to dusk coal miners and factory workers, I knew understanding me was not possible—the serious debater who dressed to the nines by clothes sewn by my factory-worker aunt, flaunting my good fortune to be the first in line for a paid-for college education…No, I didn’t expect anyone to understand me…they loved pure and simple, “Eat!” “Come home and rest. “You’re studying too hard.” “Eat!”

Often, I didn’t understand their love—but I recognized it as love—pure and simple.

And even when I was young and my Nona walked two miles in the summer dawn to take care of me and my brother while my mother sweltered in the summer heat at the pajama factory, I abided by her strict rules. Dampened spirits during summer vacation with Nona on the watch.

I resented all the oversight so I made fun of her thinning hair, her peasant dresses imported from Italy, (I now have her thinning hair by the way. Karma can be cruel), the way her Italian broke up her English. I snickered at all of it while playing forest princess amid butterflies and mosquitoes. 

And when mom came home while the fireflies began their twilight flights and Nona waked her 2 miles back in the summer dusk—or mom drove her if she wasn’t too tired…Even then,

I never, ever, had a fleeting thought of killing my grandmother—never, ever. Killing my grandmother would have been like splicing off a finger or a toe—a part of me I didn’t think much about until I lost it forever.

No, never killing…I complained, yes.

I made fun of her, yes…but killing her? Are you insane to think for a moment I would have thought that for a moment?

And my father had a shot gun in their bedroom. I knew exactly where it was, unlocked, accessible and usually loaded. He taught me to shoot skeet with that gun. He killed a copperhead under my feet once, skilled marksman that he was. And yes, he killed deer we ate, every fall several weeks before Thanksgiving.

I never, ever would have thought of picking up that gun and aiming it at any human—let alone my Nona…Let alone children.

I never went to that hate place where the only option is that they have to take you out.

Maybe that was because I had a home where they always, mercifully, always took me in.

Copyright, 2022. Gloria DeGaetano. All rights reserved.