On hot summer nights as a child, I would sit outside with my Dad and listen to the Twins on his RCA Victor 
transistor radio. It was small, and we had to huddle around it as we listened to Herb Carneal and Halsey Hall see the game for us.
He’s rounding third and heading for home plate.
Dad’s excitement always poured over me. I was the son he never had.
Home plate. Home base. Heading for home. This was the desired destination, and why shouldn’t it be? Home is important. The very idea should fill us with a feeling of lasting security and warmth. There is nothing more desirous than to make a safe haven for yourself and your loved ones to run too.
Your home.
Perhaps it’s the holidays looming in the wings,or maybe it’s the election, but what ever it is I have been thinking a great deal lately about this thing called home. My home has changed greatly in the past three years, but the idea stays the same. Home has always been where my loved ones are.Whether we were at the mortgage address or in a hotel, that was home. Please don’t misunderstand me, I love the small refined things a home provides. Comfortable surroundings, space for my crap (see recent post), but it’s also the people. My family and friends, that’s the most important part of home. Anything can give you a roof over your head or a place to store your socks, but only the people in your life can help you celebrate a home.
Too schmaltzy. Well sometimes that’s what honest feelings are: schmaltz. Deal with it.
My Mother provided a lovely home for us. We lived on a farm in central Minnesota until I was eleven. She was a transplanted country girl who loved Minneapolis, but she fell in love and married a gypsy (another post) and his dream, at that moment, was to own a farm. Mostly a trooper, she insisted on providing proper meals for us. Not just balanced nutritionally, but she had to have the table set with silverware in classic formation, bread plates, and yes, even individual salt cellars. She played music during dinner. Providing a fine home was an essential part of who she was. She was no Emily Post (or for you young ones-Martha Stewart), but she loved making our home as elegant and comfortable as money would allow.
Sometimes people equate purchasing things with providing a good home. Mounds of decorative pillows surround a couch, that no one is allowed to sit on unless there’s company. Families are delegated to the basement to live out there days, with the rest of the house only used for sleeping, cooking, or guests.
My advice: use the whole damn house. No guest towels, no holiday dishes, no covers on the couch-USE THE HOUSE. Make it your home.Gather you loved ones and let it become the place where you are safe and warm. Make it the place where friends and family can mingle, and enjoy good things, good food, and good memories.
Rejoice in the finer things, but remember the most important of those things is your family, your friends, your village.
And by the way, after mulling it over, my Mother may have been more like Martha than Emily.
If you know what I mean.
But that’s a whole other tale.
Yep, I learned a lot from Mom.
