The sounds of home: An invitation
Let’s create a new community edition of Dandelion Seeds.
Hello there! And welcome to Dandelion Seeds, an illustrated newsletter that is hand-painted and hand-lettered, from my desk to yours.
You might remember that after we journeyed through “Home is a Window Seat,” I put together a special edition of Dandelion Seeds — a collection of your own window seat stories, which you had shared in the comments throughout the essay series.
I’d love to do something similar again this month, inspired by my newest illustrated essay: “Home is a Softball Field.”
The essay ends with one of the players stepping up to bat — and the moment he makes a hit.
I’d just so happened to capture the moment on video, on the day I first stumbled across the softball field. And as I rewatched it while working on the story, I was captivated by the sound of the bat connecting with the ball — or what I describe in the essay as a “glorious, metallic clink.”
The more I watched the video and listened to that clink, the more I was transported back to my childhood.
To the church softball league my dad played in when I was little. To the season I played softball myself, in the third grade. And most of all, to the games we went to for our local minor league baseball team, the Norfolk Tides.
They say that smell is the sense that stirs up the most powerful memories, but I was amazed by how much a single sound can hold as well. The nostalgia of sticky summer nights, and the crunch of peanut shells beneath your feet. The boom of organ music, and the bellow of the announcer’s voice. A sudden swell of emotion evoking family, tradition, and home.
It’s what inspired the essay’s last line:
And now it has me wondering:
What are the sounds of home for you?
If you have a moment this week, I’d love to invite you to leave a comment here, sharing a sound (or sounds) that represents a place that’s special to you.
Maybe it’s where you grew up, or where you call home now, or a place you only called home for a time (I’m thinking of a yurt I once lived in on Canada’s Salt Spring Island, and how I can still hear the owls calling through the woods each night and the sound of the rain falling on my round canvas roof).
I’ll then hand-letter your responses — no doubt with a few new illustrations 😎 — and weave them together into a new community edition of Dandelion Seeds.
Thank you as always for being here, and I can’t wait to read about your sounds of home.
With love,
Candace
Ten years ago I was living in Southern Colorado in a little town at the foot of the Spanish Peaks. I wasn't happy. I used to go out at dawn to walk on the then-renowned golf course in that place. It was the only place I could be alone and uninterrupted. I used to pray, cry, speak aloud my gratitude. I'll never forget, in the spring, the sound of the great horned owls hooting back and forth across the empty golf course as the sky lightened (I imagined them conversing about the night as they settled down to sleep) and then the song of the first meadowlark. Something about the threshold part of the day was so magical ... To this day the song of a meadowlark makes me weep, and I've always loved the owls as well. I'm in Maine now. Different species of owls and no meadowlarks, but I've never forgotten their enchanting, heart-stirring sound and those long walks alone when my heart was filled with pain. The owls and meadowlarks cracked it open a little with their beauty and innocence and I survived.
The sound of pebbles and coarse sand clacking underfoot mixed in with the notes of tall waves breaking against rocks fading into a swooshing end note, a mark of the fanned out spray in the split second before the iodine smell tickles your nose. That’s Porto, actually a very specific beach in Porto. It’s uncanny how so few of the beaches I visited have a soundscape that feels like home. Lately, some portions along the Sea of Japan, perhaps? Also, the sound of cracking or clacking bamboo and the loud caw of a crow in the early morning. Both always take me back to Japan - the first to the bamboo groves, gardens and water fountains, the second to the excitement of waking up to a brand new day in Tokyo.