Cozy@Home: Morning Shadows

A Home

Margaret Rorke

Where two will toil together

To make their human nest

Withstand life's windy weather

And be a place of rest--

A center of affection

Where children love and learn

And find in retrospection

The truths to which they turn--

A bond of interweaving

The all that touches each

A trust, a true believing

In everybody's reach--

A spell that's cast forever

Upon the ones who roam,

For time and space can't sever

The memory of home.

Home.

Is there a more beautiful word?

It can be worn, parts of it tired right out: something that maybe no one else could love, a building that sits by the side of the road and makes a curious friend ask:

"WHY in the world did you move into this old place?"

with true concern for our mental health in her voice...

She didn't understand it was love at first sight, she didn't know what it was I saw in my mind's eye when I first laid eyes on it. She couldn't know that I knew this old place could be beautiful again, that she had her own personality and her own story to tell...and that it was a dream coming true!

She couldn't have known how we longed to have cows and corn for neighbors...and to hear the sounds of lonesome right out the front door. She couldn't know the contentment of soul that I felt when I saw the lights winking at me from her wavy, old windows, the glad whisper of the golden leaves as I sat under her gigantic maple tree.

How could she know the joy that skipped around in my chest when I heard the crunchy gravel on the driveway...how the brick walk tugged my heart right up into the wide-open arms of her front porch?

How could she know of the secret whisper I heard when the lace curtains fluttered at the open windows....?

Or the welcome I felt when her warm light wrapped me up in a hug in the bright light of a golden fall day in the dining room? Did she hear the giggles when I heard the sound of the floorboards squeaking in certain places under my feet?

The FEELING I had of being, finally...HOME, and knowing it.

With all of the faults she has and long to-do lists, she's still our much-loved house and she loves us right back. And it's okay if some people don't understand.