Homesick

Home.

Such a homely little word! It evokes pictures of a cottage in the woods, surrounded by pine trees whose pungent smell wafts through open windows on the damp air of the nearby lake. It rises out of the smells of pot roasts and French onion soup and cheese toast in the oven. It is "Bonanza" and "Lassie" and Arthur Godfrey on the radio.

It is cinnamon toast and cartoons on Saturday mornings, burning leaves in the Fall, a big bakery birthday cake covered in red roses and the smell of my father's books.

Sometimes I am so homesick, but home does not exist anymore.

Because home was my mother and my father, my brothers and sister and turkey on Thanksgiving. It was traditions that followed us from house to house, town to town and the glue that made it real is gone now.

Home is family and my own family is scattered like milkweed seeds in a field of burrs. Occasionally we come together, but not like in the movies. We are more like the old fairy tales but without enough bread crumbs to find our way home.

I keep trying to create home the way I knew it.