Our General Manager, Helen Beachell, shares a very personal understanding of what is is to be rootless. Or rather what it is to have roots.
’5 years ago, I moved house. I, and my husband at the time, uprooted our two children from the life they had in North Leeds, to move to the other side of the city. “Big deal”, I hear you say. But it was. I worried about taking the children from the nursery that they knew, about whether they would make new friends, like their new home; about whether we all would.
When we moved, like many twenty-somethings, we had a loft full of stuff that we had accumulated in the ten years since we started building a grown up life. I couldn’t really have told you what we had up there, just stuff that we didn’t need or use anymore, but that for reasons sentimental, lazy or otherwise, we had kept. So, the loft came with us. It was transferred, by van, from a roof in North Leeds, to a garage in South Leeds. And there it stayed for 5 years. Until this weekend.
A lot’s happened for all of us since the September day when the junk moved from one space to another. New jobs, new schools, the end of a marriage, new partners, new friends. In those 5 years, we all grew up a lot, not just the children.
So, at the weekend, when my partner suggested that we “tackle the garage”, it came with mixed emotions for me. I was glad to finally be given the kick up the backside that I needed to sort through the junk, pleased at the prospect of having a garage that might actually become a useful space to my family, excited at the prospect of finding some of the precious things that I knew were in there somewhere, and anxious at the memories that I knew were packed away in there too.
Over the course of the weekend, and several trips to the tip with stuff (some of which I genuinely, and shamefully don’t remember ever owning) I retraced the story of my 35 years. I joyfully found the Christmas baubles and lights that my Grandad gave to me as a child, and that I remember adorning family Christmas trees for all of my childhood. My Mum had given them to me years ago, but at the time they didn’t fit with my idea of what a cool and modern Christmas tree should look like, so they got put in a bag and cast aside for me to find again, sometime later when I had grown up.
I found a note that I once sent to my ex, an abstract and unexpected reminder to me of happier times between us.
I searched for the baby book of memories that I knew was in the “book box” (there were actually 4 book boxes). The book’s whereabouts has niggled at the back of my mind for a while now, and I desperately wanted to be reunited with it again.
I found a box of my Grandparent’s wedding presents, still unused in their presentation boxes as the day they were gifted. It seemed such as waste to me to have things so beautiful that were never appreciated or shown off, but lovely and comforting to have some things that were held so precious by people who I adored and grew up with.
I struggled with the ugly black leather case of photographs full of faded faces I never knew, that are the only things I have left of my paternal Grandfather’s unhappy life.
Today in the office, we talked about what it was to be rootless, and I promised to go away and think about what that really meant, and how we could define it and articulate it throughout the month in our social media communication. It’s hard; disconnected, without a place, a lack of belonging….the list went on, but I struggled to put into words what rootless really meant for the people Simon On The Streets supports. Until now. Reflecting on my weekend as I ironed tiny school uniforms tonight, I realised that it was easier to define what it was to have roots, that it was to define being without them.
This Christmas my tree will look as it did when I was a child, and I will tell my children the story of the crazy looking lady on skis, of the painted baubles with strange-looking children signing carols, and of the horse and carriage Cinderella lights that my Grandad gave to me. I want to help them to make and understand their own roots, but to do that I have to understand my own. I understand now why I had a loft, and now a garage full of “stuff”. It is the stuff of my roots, my life, my story, of the people who loved me and influenced me, and I derive a strange and unconscious comfort from just knowing it’s there, within reach, safe. In the garage.
I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like if I had lost my roots. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I had no one, or nothing tangible to remind me of who I am or where I came from. I worry that this blog has been a little too much about me and my stuff. But our service user’s roots are in pain and carrier bags and I have never understood that more than right now.’