Home.

While driving to Utah a few weeks ago, Wade and I had a discussion about 3:00 in the morning, somewhere in Nevada maybe, about where we were going for the holidays. Were we going home? To Utah? To our parents? Was after 10 years after moving away, 6 years after being married, home still home? Why a grilled cheese always tastes better at home? Why the soda fridge in the office makes you feel at home? Why sitting in the family room talking to your mom across in the kitchen is the homiest feeling of all? Why when you walk in to the den, plop on the chair and start rifling through all your parents wedding invitations that makes you know you're home? How at home it doesn't matter what you've done, or what you've said you know you can go there and find people that still like you? I don't know that there are hard, factual answers to those questions, I just know they do. "Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."(Robert Frost). And interestingly enough, they're usually happy to do it.

Home I would hope for most people conjures up feelings of nostalgia, warmth, peace and comfort. The home of my youth certainly does. I know Wade's does for him. I want desperately to create such a place for my children. A place where they feel safe. Not judged and not criticized. A place of great expectation, and yet a place of great forgiveness and understanding. A place where grilled cheese sandwiches are unmatched and talking to mom or dad in the kitchen a few paces away ends the day in just the right way. Salt Lake, or the home of our parents, will perhaps in one way or another, always be home. It is where we sprouted and stretched, where we developed our characters and our wings and eventually flew away. It is where we learned to share and be sarcastic. Brush hair and pull it. Throw punches at those we loved and then turned around to defend those same loved one's fiercely. So long as our parents live there, home it might always be. Nevertheless, we agreed, it is not Tessa's home and will probably never be. Tessa's home is where we are, where she lives and where she will grow. And as Wade and I talked into the dark of night, it should be ours too. Our families home. Where we live and where will grow as a family. Where our kids come home too at the end of a day, the end of a semester, or for the holidays, until they begin to establish a home of their own.

Creating an atmosphere and environment that will be remembered fondly won't materialize entirely on it's own. It will require Wade and I being present for talks in the kitchen. It will ask for the allowance of children to squabble and the expectation that they'll make it right. It will demand circumstances that allow for games at the dining room table, dinners together Sunday through Thursday, and guidance through patient teaching. It is my wish that if the infastructure is built strong and sturdy,that the on goings inside will materialize into nostalgic, peaceful, comforting memories and that home will be created while nobody's looking.