This a re-post of 2010. I liked it, and juggled some words about to post it again in 2017. Now, here in 2019, I post it again.
Why
is this post going up in early November, you may ask. Christmas 2016
my husband's family went on a cruise because Mom Kane had died in
February and none of us wanted to be home, without her. It
wasn't Christmas for any of us, we acknowledged it then and now. Now,
each year since 2016 we gather in one home or another and talk about
times with Mom and Dad, and the joy they brought to Christmas. This
year, 2019 my husband and I will dance up a storm around the tree with
our teenage granddaughters, laughing about all the other dances of the
past. WE will stop our dancing after a few minutes while they carry away
the night.
All through my adult life I have known there were options, if I ever needed to make a change and make it quickly. I could close my eyes and see my parents’ home on the farm, and know that in a matter of hours, I could be there. I could go home.
No matter what happened, the image of home hung in my mind, and I could face anything. Just knowing that helped me find ways to work through a harsh situation or painful reality.
Built in 1860s, I think
Home meant that my mother would be making a pie in the kitchen and my father would be pulling into the driveway on his John Deere tractor. We would sit at the kitchen table and talk, drinking cup after cup of coffee. Dad would tell a greatly embellished story which I had heard a hundred times, but my children would listen to it and laugh. He would sit with his long legs in front of him, and his feed cap tilted to one side, rakishly. My mom would laugh, and hold one of my children on her lap, helping him/her to eat that last piece of pie.
Our old barn, wooden nails and all
Home meant that we would sleep upstairs with the windows wide open. The silence would be broken only by a dog’s bark, or the sound of the hog feeders opening and closing. I would listen to the sounds an old farm house makes. I used to think that the old house would groan at night because its joints hurt; maybe they did. My children would be safe in bed while I struggled with the dilemma that sent me running home in the first place.
North porch, Dad's boots
The old cistern and Mom's cactus
But now I find myself in a peculiar time of my life. The place I always called home is gone. Gone. When my father retired from farming, they left the farm and moved into a nice house in town, near wonderful neighbors. The farmhouse was bulldozed away by new owners who built a modern home, and it won’t groan at all. The house in town, which held together the concept of home, is now up for sale, along with all the precious things that defined home for me. My parents are together in heaven, their new home.
So now my generation has the role as the keepers, the guardians of our own children’s concept of home. My home is the place they will close their eyes and picture at the desperate times of their lives, and feel a rush of relief. They can come home.
Now, I close my eyes and hear the sounds of my own home, enjoy the memories of my children running through the hall and eating my pie at my kitchen table. My home.
