Home is Where my Loved Ones Are

I turned up that familiar road that fall afternoon, drove up that hill I so often walked.  The street that held the houses of neighbors that were like aunts and uncles of sorts.  Especially the Hawthorns across the street.  Don and Irma Dell I was his Jacqueline Reneeeee! They left a box of graham crackers inside their side door incase they weren't home when I stopped over.  If you know the Fibber McGee and Molly radio show, and the little girl next door that was the chatterbox, I think I was that little girl to them sometimes.  That street was just a beautiful place, kids grew up together, parents grew older together too and one by one each has moved on...

As I sat in my car and watched, a young dad and son came up the sidewalk hand in hand.  The little boy took off and ran ahead, through the grass, that I had played in and up onto the porch and threw open that old storm door.  As he took ahold of that brass door knob of the black wooden door, struggling to open it, I could feel that cold metal in my hand too.  It made me amazed at how powerful memories are.

toy drawer

As his dad helped him with the door and in he ran, I knew the brick floor of the foyer that he was running across.  Was he running down the hall past the stack of drawers? Was the middle drawer their toy drawer too? Is the top drawer the tool drawer?  Maybe he was heading through the kitchen and up the steps.  Had he figured out that spot at the top, where you can hide behind that short wall and scare your sibling as they come down the hall?  Which room is his? My room that used to face the old oak tree where the owl lived? Or Dawn's room at the top of the steps?  It would be most appropriate for him to be in the boy's room, there are still bee-bees rolling around in there from their Daisy bee-bee gun days.

hiding corner

My parents moved in there before I was born, they lived there 50 some years.  That is almost unheard of today. I lived there until I married. That home is the place where most of my childhood memories took place. From sitting around the kitchen table eating our chocolate ice cream before bed (which we had stirred into a shake in a bowl) Or popcorn, while dad read us a story from our Bible story book.  A bedtime snack Always happened, dad was faithful at getting us our bedtime treat.  We had our playroom in the basement with the alphabet scattered about the painted gray floor.  If they take out that carpet will they see it? Will the kids use that little closet in the playroom as their library too?   We added on the garage and patio. What a treat that was... I loved laying out there in the summer with my  baby oil, foil mattress, and Seventeen magazine.   The willow tree came and went in my time there, loved that tree. Pepper and Scamper were our cats that are laid to rest on the hill in the back corner of the yard.

living room - wooden cradle my grt grandpa made

There are so many sibling memories, many flicker in my mind just quickly, for an instant, then another. Doug and his tape recorder... It was such an amazing thing to be able to record your voice and play it back, that seems so funny now that we can do video and all... But we had more fun with a tape recorder and microphone. Doug did great sound effects . And he sang in the shower. Dave and I spent so much time in front of the fireplace listening to old radio shows with dad.  Fibber McGee and Molly, The Shadow Knows, Amos and Andy...  They were on cassettes, I'm not that old. But we listened to them over and over. We listened to so many stories on records, we didn't have a tv, so it was all imagination... Mary Poppins, Snow White and the Dwarfs in the diamond mine, Uncle Remus
was a favorite, as well as Peter Pan.  Dawn was
8 yrs older than me, so my memories of her

where Mom and Dad were usually found reading.

are not so much at the house, but of her going other places, friends, dating ect.  Our friendship flourished more after I was married with kids.  One by one my siblings married and I was there alone with mom and dad, coming home to them sitting in the back room reading or mom knitting something.  I would come in and they would put their books down and pick up magazines, they knew I would sit and yack about whatever before bed.

This address also holds the memory of us three kids meeting there to tell mom and dad of Doug's accident and death.  Telling them there in the front yard, as they knew something was wrong when we all showed up at once, will forever b ingrained in my memory. We grieved there together in the living room as family and friends came and went.   It just felt good to be at home together. The house brought comfort I thought.  It was there that Mom waged her battle with cancer.  Us kids were sleeping there once again, in a very different role.  There was nowhere else we would rather be though. It was a very hard time, but a time that we pulled together and felt the prayers and witnessed the grace and strength that God gives, sometimes an hour at a time.  As the days went on and a few years, it came time to start packing things up. Time for a new place for mom and dad. What to sell, what to give away, what to keep?

Things that belonged to ancestors that us kids had never met, but feel like we know.  Who's was this? Who made this?  Things that mean nothing to others but have sentimental value to us.  As we moved mom and dad into their new duplex it was heart wrenching at times, but I began to realize that the duplex was feeling like their home now, not home in the sense of "my home" maybe, but home is where they are. The items they chose to take with them add to it being "their place".  While in my mind 110 S Hamilton will always be as it was last spring, before it all started.  Home is where your loved ones are and as more of them pass into eternity, that will be the home that we will reunite in.  This journey made me think about my home here for my family, the memories they have and are making... I don't think I have been very purposeful in making memories, but that's the good/bad thing about memories, they happen no matter if we try or not... The good and the bad... That makes up life... That molds us into who we are... then God uses those experiences for us to relate to others going through similar circumstances. 

This was a long one, a bit rambling, but thoughts that I have had rolling around in my head... Wanted to get them down. Judy, thanks for the push, two years and I got a new post done.