A Place Called Home
by Emmanuelle de Roos

She lowers the boxes to the carpet and opens the white wardrobe. A little brown bear, lying face up with its paws and bow imprinted with the words MEDI-CLINIC stares up at her. It is a standard hospital bear given to all newborns. Lily stoops down, scoops up the lost bear and plops to the floor. This is their third day in the newly rented house.

Lily and Eric had managed to get their furniture arranged into the rooms on their first night in the house; now the task of unpacking the endless boxes is hers as Eric starts his new career. Her investment banker boyfriend, Eric, who she has been dating for just over a year, received his promotion and transfer to Johannesburg in his third year with the corporation and asked her to join him on a new adventure in the big city, Lily never hesitated, she feels overwhelmed with passion for him. This home that he personally chose for them, filled with three large bedrooms and a jungle gym, suitable only for a family, is a declaration of their commitment and future together.

Lily loves the peachy colours; terracotta floors and the open plan flow overlooking the lounge and patio to see directly into the tropical garden. She finds the scratch plaster walls arty. The main attraction for them is the oversized family room above the garage, filled with windows in every direction giving a superb view of the city, where the endless sunlight floods every corner of the room. Lily has styled this room as her studio, lined with unfinished canvases, still lifes, portraits, landscapes, and it is the only room she has finished unpacking. She desperately wants to get started spending endless days in her new studio, where she can watch the neighbours and use them as inspiration on her canvas. She knows that the hadedas that line the tops of the jungle gym will find a corner in some artwork, as will the endless palms that line the walls. Here she will fulfill her dream of becoming a recognized artist, but for now she is unpacking boxes.

Each window is lined with specially made curtains, each room as bland in cream linen as the next, never revealing the room's owner, no pink for girls, blue for boys, nothing overly feminine or masculine. Except for the one bedroom, a child's room where teddies stare from the fabric and where you know toys were once scattered over the carpets. Lily decides to use this room as their storeroom so that they can close the door and it won't betray their current state as a young childless couple. It is in this room that she has decided to start unpacking their endless shoeboxes filled with photos of childhood friends, graduations, birthdays, holidays and smiling memories.

Lily sits on the carpet shaking her head, staring at her bear. It has been four years since the last time she saw this bear and saw it walk out the hospital room tucked into her baby's blanket. Why has she found it now? After all these years, when she has finally taken the courage to move away from the reminders of the hurt in her mother's face, away from the people who convinced her that she was not enough for her baby.

Lily's body starts to shake; the tears stream down her face. How many nights has she cried like this? Trying to push the pain away, trying to ignore the mistake she made, to hide the devastating loss and feelings of worthlessness that surrounded that fateful day. She has moved from day to day trying to distract herself, losing herself in her art, not finding the time to consolidate her loss, but she knows that she has felt that loss in nearly everything that she has done. The whole time she was pregnant she remained in a state of denial, she knew she was pregnant, but she hoped that that one night stand's reminder would just go away. It was her mother who called the adoption agency, it was also her mother who kept telling her that she couldn't offer a child, the stability it would need with her penniless lifestyle of spending mornings in art classes and afternoons, trying to sell those canvases at local flea markets.

Sitting on this child's floor with this lost bear, feeling comfort from the hundreds of eyes staring at her from their hanging drapes, she finally allows herself to come to terms with that decision of giving her boy a mother and father and a chance at love in a complete family. She realizes that she has not truly mourned her loss, or allowed the memories of that time and of her precious son to surface. At long last Lily allows herself to climb out of the deep dark hole of this dreaded family secret and shame, to forgive herself and to trust that her well-meaning family needed to do the right thing for her and her baby.

Lily knows that she is in another time and place now, with Eric who cares deeply for her, she knows that giving up that little boy was the hardest obstacle of her life, but it has made her stronger, more mature and given her a pathway into adulthood. Lily knows that this loss will affect every aspect of her life, she knows she will always stare longer at little boys of the same age, hoping to see an image of herself stare back, yearning to touch her lost boy, hear him and know that his life is good. She knows that she cannot go back in time and change that moment, she can however go forward in her new home, in a new city with a man who will give her a second chance at holding a new bundle. Her bundle, in this place she will call home.

© Emmanuelle de Roos