The wood siding is warn and faded but still solid. The double front door with the matching screens hung with well oiled springs cause a familiar bang of wood and metal adding a low but unmistakable harmony to the their melody. There are no words to their song but they sing their message clear and loud: “Come on in …You’re home!” The thick and pungent smell of wood smoke hangs over the entrance embracing you like the stout but loving arms of your grandpa. Real or imaginary they hold you with the security most long for but find so evasive. You find yourself drawn, compelled, to place your feet on those well worn grooves, in steps where countless others have done the same pulling you up the porch past the swing and rocker through those doors and into a world that feels as warm and safe as the pile of grandma’s quilts you lay under on a clear cold morning, the smell of breakfast: eggs, bacon, pancakes, and coffee warming you inside while the quilts snuggle you as tightly as one of your grandma’s hugs. “You’re Home …Stay.”The world outside melts away like snow in the warmth of spring and your cares trickle off your back like the small rivers such a scene creates. Inside you find all manner of things to occupy your time and attention from the smell of the pantry with all the food stores, to the treasures in the room under the stairs complete with candy, gum and the aroma of pipe tobacco. It is a carefree kingdom a place where problems are adventures; dragons to be slain, and the sound of the family carries the ring of “Excalibur” fending of all who would assail you. “You’re home …Rest.”
In the living room you find yourself under the strange anesthetic of the wood stove complete with water pan on top as makeshift humidifier. The chair you’re in clings to you issuing its challenge; “I dare you to move!” You cannot, you don’t want to. Your eyes grow heavy drugged by the heat of the stove almost unbearable. It works its magic and caresses your senses. Life becomes dreamy as you drift into the arms of peace there is no desire to wake. Nothing is pressing you, time has ceased. It is like the lullaby of a long car ride you never want to end as it rocks you gently only to be interrupted late in the night as your dad carries you to the warmth of your bed. The chair feels as secure as both. “Your home …Don’t worry.”
You search the recesses of your memories and try to locate the last time you felt like this; The snow storm, it completely shut everything down and the world stopped at least for a time, that had helped, but there was something else. As you close your eyes and drift off full of comfort like a big Sunday meal your mind is flooded with the faces of those who have and do, challenge, encourage, and hold you with a love unbreakable that finds it’s source in an unchanging uncompromising standard that is the “same, yesterday, today and forever” it is divine. “You’re home ….they are here.” They are after all, “home”. Some are blood, some are friends, some are memories having left us either by distance or death but they, by a standard so divine, so patient, full of joy, peace and truth are our “home”. Come on in maybe you’ll find it familiar or maybe for the first time you too will be home.
