Friday Five: Home Sweet Home

Songbird posted another interesting FF. I can’t tell if she is nesting or about to pull up roots. But it gets me thinkin’...


I've got home on my mind: what it feels like, how we make it, what we carry from the past and how we separate other people's leftovers from objects that really reflect our identity. My family has had one home for the past 13 years, the longest I've ever lived anywhere. As the time when all the children are gone comes closer, I wonder where my next home will be?






So here are five questions about home.

1) Where was your first home?

My first home was in Chillicothe, IL outside of Peoria. So how it “plays in Peoria” is very interesting to me. I remember the house. My brother was there just this spring for his 60th high school reunion. He says the house is still there across from the old high school.



2) Do you ever dream about places you used to live?

I used to until I moved back to TX. 

3) If you could bring back one person from your past to sit at your dinner table, who would you choose?

My mom. But not EVERY meal! I would love to talk to her again about things around Ft. Worth and how they have developed the way they did. I would love to talk to her about genealogy and what I have found out about the family. She couldn’t talk her last 3 years of her life and just to be able to talk with her would be a blessing.

4) What's your favorite room in your current living space?

My new office. A couple of revgals came last week and help me organize the office and now I have a place to work, think, pray, study, write and just putz.

5) Is there an object or an item where you live now that represents home? If not, can you think of one from your childhood?

‘Home’ was not necessarily a pleasant place growing up and I spent much of my life running away from it—claiming who I was despite what my home environment was like. It is ironic that I have returned to the place where I grew up and am enjoying it. There is something to be said about the kind of healing that has gone on in my life, psychological and spiritual. ‘Home’ now has to do less with objects—I have moved too many times in my life to center on ‘things’, but home has to do with ‘who’ is there.                                                                 (J. is standing on the far left in the blue flowered jacket)

J’s cancer has made me think a lot about what happens when the “who” might not be there. And for the first time since I was a child, I have really known fear. It is an important thing to think about, fear, because it makes strange one’s whole approach to life. The only thing that seems to calm it is prayer and friends.

Ooooh I think I have a blog article coming on….