Beth Is Where the Heart Is

Saturday morning, lying in shavasana pose in my yoga classroom. I am finally beginning to feel a little relaxed. My mind begins to drift.

I have been traveling for the seven weekends prior to this one. I have long been dealing with the existential crisis of our far-flung and continuously mobile society, and the resulting fact that no matter where I live, I will never be able to be physically proximate to all of the family and friends I most deeply love. Being on the road so much lately, it has been a delight to realize that wherever I go, I have a port in every storm - but also sad to depart each port, and sadder still to feel rootless, and miss even those who live near where my mail is currently delivered.

As my mind drifts deeper into the yoga-soothed meditative state, I begin thinking of home. What is home? Where is home? Who is home?

A long-buried memory resurfaces.

When I was in high school, I took a summer Hebrew course offered by an Israeli-Frenchman. For anyone who knows any stereotypes about the French, or about the Israelis, you can imagine that such a combination would produce the most condescending, chain-smoking, dubious person ever (stereotypically speaking, of course). Well, this man was that stereotype personified. He asked us to all go around the room and introduce ourselves, and if we had Hebrew names, to share them. As it happens, I do have a Hebrew name, Beit.

"Beit?" Sneered the Israeli-Frenchman. "Beit, that means house. Your parents, zey named you House? Are zey stupid?"

The rest of the class tittered. They all either didn't have Hebrew names, or had good solid ones like David, Daniel, or Rivka.

"It's a name, too," I defended weakly.

"Oh sure, sure," shrugged the Israeli-Frenchman, pursing his lips, probably less at me and more at the stupid rule that barred him from smoking in the classroom. "But no one is actually named that anymore. It is, how you say, old-fashioned. Out of date." He snickered. "It is not normal, to just be a girl named House!"

I had no further defense, and truly - I thought of my name as meaning "house." Even after seven semester of college-level Hebrew, when I thought of my name, I translated it as "house." But unexpectedly, in the midst of a yoga meditation, years later and wholly out of context, revelation: Beit means, even more literally than it means "house"... "home."

Such a simple realization, such small semantic differences - but the room felt suddenly warmer. It was odd to be named house, but what did mean to be named home?

I began to mull this over. Meanwhile, I left the sanctity of the yoga studio and life continued to hit, with complications and twists and surprises and confusions arising as they do. I sent a frustrated email to a friend, and I received a response that soothed me more than this friend can know. I had not shared my "home" revelation with anyone, but this is what my friend wrote to me, about me:

"...this Beth keeps a lot of people sane, safe, comforted, fed, smiling, and feeling good about themselves. And that's just for starters."

And all I could think was, is that me? I really do that? That sounds like... home.

If it is true, how lucky I am to live up to the incredible name my brilliant parents gave me. Like a snail with its shell on its back, wherever I go, I will take home with me. It is who and what I should be: I will bring with me, for those I love, the gifts of a solid home: trust, shelter, safety, love.

I am not, as the Israeli-Frenchman wrote me off more than a decade ago, a girl named House. I am Beth, and I am home.

*************************************************************************************
Rejected titles for this post:

• The Beth that Ken and Lisa Built (because "Beth" there would be substituting for house instead of home, AND because it makes me sound like a weird robot my parents constructed using aluminum and shiny buttons)
• There's No Place Like Beth (I'm a place now? ....Are you calling me fat?)
• Beth Sweet Beth (Too saccharine)
• Bethland Security (Too militant)
• Beth, Beth On the Range (Too cooked-sounding, frankly.)