by
Nora Murphy
have passed since this famous 1970s duo recorded “The Boxer," yet I’m still looking for home.
As a kid, I listened to “The Boxer” over and over again. His plea called to me from the black portable
record player my sister and I stored in our bedroom closet. I’d open the door as wide as possible, coax
the black circle onto a central metal spike, then twist a little black knob that sat in the right-hand
corner of the square record player. The record would fall down the metal pole. A plastic arm would
jerk into place, bringing with it a tiny needle that bounced onto the record with gentle thud. When
the needle made contact with the vinyl, Simon and Garfunkel’s two-part harmony rose out of the box,
into the closet, and into my heart.
I didn’t like all the songs on their famous album “Bridge Over Troubled Water ” when it first came
out. The Cecilia song didn’t make sense, after all I was a nine-year-old virgin. The title bridge song
was too sad. “So Long, You Move Too Fast,” was thrilling, but it reminded me of Gene Kelly dancing
up and down the streetlights in "Singing in the Rain". In other words, too old-fashioned. No, I fell in
love with The Boxer—the man who had lived for far too long in the troubled streets of New York. He
was lonely and he wanted to make his way home. But by the time the song ends, the boxer is still
dreaming of home on the streets, in railway stations, and in the boxing ring.
I have always had a home—a safe, dry place to live, like the 100-year-old wooden frame home in a
hilly oak-studded river neighborhood called Prospect Park, not in Brooklyn but in Minneapolis where
I grew up. I’ve always been surrounded by family or friends, unlike the boxer who had to make it on
his own as a young child. I have always lived just far enough away from hunger, from crime, from
poverty and joblessness, that the ills of society seemed more like a dream than a reality. But
something about the boxer’s song called to me as a child, and even now.
I’ve searched backwards in time—looking at the historical roots of my family, of Minnesota, and of
our nation. I’ve searched across the Atlantic Ocean in the homes of my ancestor’s Irish ancestors. I’ve
searched in the music, the stories, and the songs of my people and those of the people who lived here
along the river first—the Dakota and the Ojibwe first nations. Each search yields a possible
homeland. A birthplace, a name, a language arrive one by one in my in-box. Temporarily I’m
convinced that I’ve found a home, my home. But after a few days, a few years, a few generations,
their solidity disappears. How can I be Irish, if my ancestors left 150 years ago? How can I be
American if my ancestors didn’t originate from this soil? I’m left hanging mid-way across the ocean,
unable to rest on either shore.
At the end of his song, the boxer resigns himself to the boxing ring and to carrying the reminder of
hatred and pain. I’ve resigned myself to the belief that there is no place called home. I don’t mean
this the way Dorothy does in the “Wizard of Oz,” as she clicks her ruby red slippers three times,
repeating, “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” No I’m beginning to believe
quite literally there is no home.
Home is only an idea, a mental construct, that we humans create, cling to, and fight for because we
don’t want to admit that there is no such thing as solid ground. No place, no home, nothing,
absolutely nothing can be held on to because everything—even home—changes constantly.
The river told me this. By that I mean the Mississippi River, or the great river, as the original Ojibwe
name means. I have lived within a mile of this pivotal American corridor for most of my life—from
the days of childhood when I first dreamed of Simon and Garfunkel’s boxer, to these days living in
another hilly river neighborhood. In fact, the Mississippi has been a part of my family for
generations. My great-great grandparents emigrated from Ireland in a steamboat up the Mississippi
in the 1850s. My children were born in a hospital overlooking the river 150 years later. Each
generation has held fast to the current in this great river. In fact, the Mississippi may be the only
place that we could all point to and say, “Yes. Yes, this river is where we make our home. Yes, this
river is home.”
But it isn’t. After searching up and down this river, and the historical and cultural currents that feed
into it, the river tells me otherwise. It shouts: 'I am larger than all the stories that line my shore. Deeper
than all the joys and sorrows thrown into my muddy waters. Older than all the generations that have
lived off my riches. Wiser than all of the dreams reflecting off my surface. You don’t believe me?' The
river challenges, 'Then come closer to the edge and look.'
history and culture. She has a special interest in the Irish and American Indian experience.
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