Returning Home: On Making and Gratitude

Last year, in the thick of summer, I was finally home. My father built my childhood home, and it is a place I feel deeply connected to. His homes, built from adobe brick, a block made of mud and hay, dried naturally by the sun and rooted in a long tradition in New Mexico, have often been described as fortresses.

I began planting a garden as a way to feel and understand the earth that shaped the walls of our home, and to reflect on how that land shaped my upbringing. The garden became a way of giving back to the place that raised me, an expression of gratitude for the land where my family learned what it meant to feel at home. I had just finished Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, The Serviceberry, in which she writes about nature and reciprocity, and I was inspired not only to be grateful, but to actively return something to the earth.

Growing up, though, summers were for traveling. My dad could not wait for my school breaks and planned trips for our family as soon as school let out. Every morning leading up to those trips, you would find him perched on a stool, pouring over a Let’s Go, a Cadogan, or a DK guidebook, with a Michelin map stretched beneath his breakfast plate.

He was fascinated by many things, from hiking the Alps, to the extravagance of Venetian architecture, to soaking in the art at the Louvre. My mom added her own layer to these trips by seeking out places that specialized in local crafts. She wanted to see what was being made by hand, gathering inspiration she would later bring back to her quilting.

Then we'd return home, my childhood home, the home where my jewelry studio is attached, and create. My dad returned to building his adobe homes energized by what he had seen. My mom returned to her sewing room, inspired by history and craft. And my imagination was once again filled with curiosities and wonder.

The ideas of home and travel have always been central to my work. When I began my jewelry journey, I also began teaching myself art history as a way to better understand the places and objects I had seen while traveling with my parents.

I started with the Homeric epics, and it was impossible not to fall in love with The Odyssey, a story defined by the tension between a longing for home and the pull of adventure. I designed early pieces inspired by these ancient stories, always trying to tie them back to my own relationship with home.

When my father was hospitalized, in the middle of it all, I moved back home.

As I packed my jewelry, I noticed how the work had shifted. The pieces were becoming more and more about home. It was as if I had traveled to far away places and distant times with my initial designs, but was slowly making my way back home with each piece.

Like Odysseus, my jewelry journey has been marked by many twists and turns. And like him, the chapter of my work before my father’s passing was centered around nostos, homecoming, a return to home.

“Sing to me, O Muse, of the man of twists and turns.” I cannot count how many times I have recited the opening line of The Odyssey to myself while sitting at my workbench.

My own nostos is reflected in specific designs. The Adobe ring was inspired by my father’s signature stacking of adobes over gate entrances. The Corbel rings draw directly from the wooden pillars and corbels he placed throughout his structures. The Madera earrings are inspired by the traditional woodworked furniture of northern New Mexico.

As I step into the garden for my second summer back home, I find myself cherishing this chapter of my own nostos. This year, though, I feel drawn to go deeper and to complete the word itself: nostalgia, from nostos, meaning homecoming, and álgos (or -algia), meaning ache. The longing to return is not only to a place, but to myself and to an earlier version of myself as a maker.

This is where Penelope enters the story. While Odysseus wandered, she wove and unraveled her cloth each night as she waited for his return. Beadwork, my own form of weaving, has returned to me this year in much the same way. It carries patience, remembrance, and gratitude, and it reminds me that returning is not about standing still, but about tending what endures.

Thanks so much for reading.

Take care,

Caitlin