A Call from Home

Home means sunlight, and violets laid softly on the sledding hill next to an unassuming house. It's a room with a shade I can close to be alone for thinking and open to greet the world. Home is a bed for sleeping under a cover of down on a pillow full with feathers. It's a basement for conjuring up all things an active imagination can provide. It's a backyard big enough for running until you're out of breath, or out of steam, or out of the feeling that made you want to run in the first place. Home is a tree on the riverbank for breathing.

Home is dreams of musical notes, floating on thoughts not yet created. Home is warm and safe--a place for growing without an audience of stuck critics and straight line rules.

In my home lived a man who was always gentle, always strong, who listened without giving advice and gave advice without condition. He was tall and broad with a barrel chest that bent the tree out front with jealousy. In my home lived a woman who cared so deeply that she was often silent, except when she spoke of information, rules, and fears. Her hair was soft and despite her strength, so was her heart. The softness showed when she could let you see it, and touch it. And feel it.

Home fills me with the moonlight of peace and the firelight of romance. It makes me a believer. I think that if I had stayed long enough, I would have found the world I learned about in the wide-hall school that held too many desks to touch the children who went there.

We all start in a place called home. We leave it to find our own home. Sometimes the home we look for is the one we left.

The home I remember calls me from the home I call my own.

—me strauss Letting me be