{quote by Charles Dickens}
My dad's oldest sister has an autographed picture of Mr. Rogers. It's framed. Hanging in her bedroom. Where most people have wedding pictures, or photographs of their mothers or children or grandchildren is a picture of the man who prefers sweaters that zip--as opposed to button--a picture of the silver-haired man that asks everyone to be his neighbor. If you knew her, this would make perfect sense.
We found this out Sunday night when two of my cousins (from opposite sides of the family) showed up fortuitously on my parent's front porch. This morsel of information offered up at the dining table over dessert provided several minutes worth of chortling, from both sides of the family.
Also, at church on Sunday, we discussed houses. Well, Home, more like. As in, what makes one. How the things you bring into it, the things you surround yourself with, create that matchless, marvelous feeling of home. There's no better feeling, no feeling more important, really. It's something I think about all the time.
What would Grandma and Grandpa's house be without Grandpa's desk, or Grandma's loom off the kitchen. What would it be like without the sound of the big white freezer in the family room, humming the low basso tune while keeping Snelgrove's ice cream cold deep down in its belly.
My parents have an Amish quilt above the sofa in the family room. It's been in all three houses we've lived in. Color palettes for furnishings have been determined by it. Upstairs in Mom and Dad's closet is Dad's basket. The one with spare change for the bus, safety pins and those plastic things that keep your socks together in the laundry. It's all there for the taking (or so we've told ourselves over the years in a lemonade stand crisis, when the ice cream man's music plays faintly three streets over, or when a button goes missing at the last minute.) There's the picture of the red bucket in the hall and the big bulletin board of family photos. These things make home Home.
Perhaps I'll never know the secret ingredients to create that feeling, but for my aunt that picture of Mr. Rogers, for whatever reason, makes her feel at home. Often it's not the things in our house that make it a home, but the people inside. Their voices. Laughter. The familiar scales played on the piano late at night when you're trying to watch television. The scuff of someone's feet on the wood floors early in the morning. And the knock at the door, the familiar finger rhythm of a neighbor.
A few years ago, I made a list of the homes I admire (which basically parallels the list of people I admire.) The assignment didn't stop there. I was to describe what under those roofs and between those four walls made me feel that ineffable feeling, that sense of place, that sense of self, that sense of being. It included such things as: rooms full of books, walls full of art, birthday traditions, house rules, religious practices. It was as varied as the households on it and included houses under which I felt that ineffable feeling of home.
A few weeks ago, in my Grandma's home near the mountains, I balanced my sister's baby on my forearm. We made our way down the hallway with the bookshelves full of trinkets from their world travels: cowbells from Switzerland, figurines from Germany, crystal from Italy. Excitedly, we opened the cupboards at the end of the hall, which are stubborn like age-d joints that haven't been used in a long while. Neatly in place were the alphabet puzzles, farm animals and the big red toy barn. We stood cows on their four legs, propped up trees perpendicular to the ground and fussed with the letters of the alphabet. Opening that cupboard was like opening the doors to a second childhood.
All of us are the products of the elements to which we are exposed.
I love this idea. Which things in my life I've been exposed to that have become a part of me? I am grateful to parents and extended family and friends for exposing me to all the beauty life has to offer. To my parents for creating home and to so many others whose houses are not just four walls, but homes away from home.
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