"Home"

The scrapbook in my mind is full of pictures the way I remember them. Some brighter, some faded, some completely skewed, I'm sure.

For years I tried to recreate the storybook memories of a life I never lived.

We took the children home for every holiday and almost every weekend, dressed in clothes I "remembered" from pictures.  They were clothes I made in memory of those nonexistent moments from the past.

Feed Me I'm Yours was the cook book Bible in our household.  My children were going to grow up naturally.  No refined sugar, no canned vegetables, no "bad" food. When I realized they were being given twinkies and soda pop at "home" we started going back there less.

Slowly realizing that my memories were not the same as my mother's, or my siblings, I began going home less. And by my late thirties there was a more distinct separation of "them" and "us."

The scrapbook was put away as we began to design our own holidays and traditions.  Soccer, baseball and scouts, community theatre, band concerts, piano recitals. . . we were moving ever farther from the family fold.

Until one day I realized that "home" had moved.  It now resided with us, wherever we were and not where I used to be.

Now "home" is truly where my heart is and like love, that is an infinitely large number of places.