Poets have written about it, movies have been based on it and novels have informed us that we can never go there again. Baseball players try to get there with every game they play and all of us long for it. Home, there truly is no place like it. Just what is it that makes a house a home? Why do we all work so hard to get there and feel at such a loss when we are away from it?
The answer, I am certain, lies with the people and creatures who live within those four walls. When a house is really a home, everything seems to click. You can work all day, toiling for your living, putting up with all craziness that goes along with employment. However, at the end of your workday, where do you long to go? Why of course, your home and family, pets and all those furry creations. In fact, those living creatures are the very reason we work in the first place.
Our family makes our house a home. We build memories with those people and creatures and take those memories with us wherever we go. Good times and bad, laughter and tears, victories and defeats, these are all created and celebrated in our home. Children are born, parents drop by for visits and adventures are planned within the warm confines of our home.
I can still remember, with great clarity, the home where I spent most of my childhood days. It was a warm and welcoming place, smack dab in the middle of the block, where most of my friends also lived and grew up. We would gather at each others homes for games, meals, sleep-overs and parties. My room looked out over the front of the house and I remember many summer days spent looking out at the streetlights and cars gliding down that road. My home had a backyard where I learned how to play catch and basketball. Funny how that yard seemed so large back then when in reality it is half the size of the yard in back of my current home.
That little fact contains a big secret about all of our homes. The memories we create there are almost always somewhat larger and bolder than they really are. As time passes on, we tend to forget most of the bad times and exaggerate the good. (Unless, of course, those memories are really bad ones, in which case, forgetting them may take some time and effort.) However, almost all of the memories from my childhood home are pleasant. I made my first friends there, I grew into a young adult there and I also left there in order to discover my own home. Home was, and is, a marvelous and almost mystical place for all of us and it certainly plays a central role in that adventure we call life.
There really is no place like home. As Dorothy taught us, getting there is often not as easy as merely clicking our heals together. Like a ballplayer, I always long to return home and as any athlete will tell you, once you get there, enjoying that experience with family and friends makes the trip worthwhile. Make your house a home and always, always, remember that the true joy of any home are the living, breathing family members who also call that place their home. Home. There is no better word in the English language.