Home

[Lucille]

I live in a very modest little house, and was thinking recently what it is that makes a house a home. It isn't necessary to have fancy things to have someplace that is a shelter against the travails of the world, a safe place to go. It does not need to be a palace. What makes a home? For me, it would be my critters, and the gardens I have put so much time into. Also, there are memories here, I can walk into a room and remember when my children were babies, had birthday parties, had friends over.

What makes a home, for you?

[Sasheena]

Home is safe...where I can go without a bra...where I can swim in my swimming pool nekkid.... where I don't have to watch my every action because I'm an example to my students... where I have creatures. To me home is the place concentrated with love. Since I've only been here 18 months, I don't have any fancy memories.

I remember when I was a kid. I grew up in a "tract house" as mom would put it. Cinderblock walls in the kitchen. Not the highest level of construction you could possibly imagine. I used to dream of one day owning my own home, like my parents did. I would dream of a place like my own home. (it was a shack!)... then I went away on a mission, spending 18 months in texas, and I was looking forward to my return home, to HOME... and my parents had said they had a surprise for me. Well they didn't drive "HOME" they drove to some fancy house on the other side of town. I don't know why, but it made me feel very much like I had a case of homesickness that was never able to heal by going home.... because home was gone. Sure the new house was in a much nicer neighborhood, the house itself better than the piece of !$#% that the old house was, but it wasn't home. I'd been living in strange places while on my mission I'd looked forward to the familiar. But I never got it.