Home...

Home is not so much about a place, but about relationships, the people around the hearth, around its heart. For me, home was a sanctuary from the outside world, a place of safety. Home was a place of warmth and nurturing smells like Italian sausage sandwiches on rainy days, radio theater and candles when the lights went out, and broiled chicken wings and Godzilla's tinny roars on a Saturday afternoon. Home was cuddled crock pot warmth emanating its richness to fill the emptiness of a wounded latch-key heart; a sincere attempt to soften a broken home's lonely reality. The comforting smell of food connected us beyond barriers of time and space. She wanted us to feel her presence, her warmth, her safety even if she wasn't there. She was sunlit beams streaming across the floor, warming us like outstretched cats, filling us with the light and goodness that was her. Home wasn't a place. Home was my mother...

When she died, the house that was once home became nothing more than a shell, an empty facsimile of the life it had once been; no more warmth, no more smells. Evidence that was her life faded away as the house was emptied and prepared for sale. It only became real when the child before me began to cry... "It doesn't smell like Grandma anymore..." He felt it too, and yet....

We shut the door one last time and went home. Even though she is gone, I still find warm comfort in the smell of a simmering crock pot, sausage sandwiches on rainy days, chicken wings and Godzilla movies on a Saturday afternoon. To this day, when sunbeams stretch across the room and warm my face, I feel my mother's touch and no matter where I am, I'm home. I sometimes wonder what my son will remember when I am gone. Whatever it is, I hope it's home....