HOME. Fall 2020 | Page 23

Though there is certainly grace in the way Jack is welcomed home, there is also a good deal of graceless human imperfection. Reverend Boughton’s fumbling attempts to connect with his son frequently fall short. Jack, despite his deep longing to belong, continues to feel out of place and sometimes relapses into destructive habits. Struggling with his seeming inability to believe in God, he grapples with the state of his soul and the disapproval of his father’s closest friend, the minister John Ames. It is in Jack that Robinson shows the painful reality of sin and the way it stains our lives. And yet, amidst this brokenness, Robinson illuminates something beautiful and holy in the ordinary day-to-day. Very little happens in Home by way of plot. No wildly dramatic events unsettle Gilead; no one moment serves as a startling climax. Instead, the rhythms and chores of ordinary life form the backdrop of the slowly unspooling story of family and grace—and these rhythms and chores are what slowly bring Jack and Glory together. At first, Glory finds that the intervening years since she last saw Jack have made her brother a stranger to her. But household activities provide a means through which Jack is somehow enfolded back into the family. Watching Jack at work, Glory realizes “[h]e used to live here, and he knew how things were done,” despite the fact that “it had somehow never seemed to her that the place had his attention.” He tends “with particular care” the overgrown garden where the Boughton children once played. He helps Glory care for their father, whose age and illness have left him dependent on others. In Home, the ordinary is intimately holy, infused with a grace that draws two grieving, lonely people into empathy and love. Jack and Glory overcome their initial wariness and awkwardness as they meet one another in the midst of chores. It is while Glory gives Jack a haircut that Illustrated by Claire Lin '23 In Home, the ordinary is intimately holy, infused with a grace that draws two grieving, lonely people into empathy and love. he confesses, “I’m so tired of myself,” and she pauses to wipe away her battered brother’s tears. It is as Glory irons a shirt of his that she finally learns of the woman he loves. Everyday drudgery and housekeeping become moments to be fully known—and moments to fully trust— in brokenness, in sadness, in desperation. This sense of togetherness and trust emerges throughout Home via another ordinary activity grounded in the domestic: the cooking and sharing of food. There is, of course, a dinner to welcome the prodigal son home, complete with roast, biscuits, and potatoes. But it is in meals far simpler, far more ordinary, that Robinson really illuminates family intimacy. Meals are a grace extended to the wayward and the wounded, telling them that they are not alone and that they are loved. “After every calamity of any significance,” Glory recalls, her mother would bake or cook to say, “This house has a soul that loves us all,” and to offer “peace…and amnesty.” And Glory herself ministers to both her brother and father through meals. She prepares chicken and dumplings when a particularly rough night for the family leaves Jack and their father “laid low by grief, as if it were a sickness.” There is no better way, Glory decides, “to announce the return of comfort and well-being except by cooking something fragrant.” Gathering at the table, despite everything, is a balm in Gilead for the wounded, for the sin-sick soul. 1 What does it mean to come home, then? For Glory and for Jack, coming home involves acknowledging grief and brokenness. It involves trusting and loving through the ins and outs of daily life. It is the truth that there is nothing too big and nothing too small for grace. And in this truth, Robinson gives us a glimpse 1 This line refers to the refrain from the traditional African American spiritual, “There is a Balm in Gilead.” 23