Home

Home is anywhere my husband and children are.

It is Andy Williams on Christmas morning. It is the memory of our black Labrador Sky asleep and softly snoring at the foot of the bed. It is the smell of coffee brewing in the morning. It is lazy-bones pajama days, and rainy days, and spring cleaning days.

Home is baking cookies with the baby, spirited political conversations with my son over dinner, our daughter’s footsteps mounting the stairs when she comes home to visit. It is comedy and tragedy and power struggles and loud singing in the shower.

Home is the neighbor’s barking dog, the coyotes howling, the peacocks wild calls, the croaking symphony of frogs after a heavy rain, the hawks screeching as they take the fledglings out for the first solo flight of Spring. It is impossibly yellow fields of mustard flowers that stretch on forever and wildfires and rattlesnakes and dust storms.

Home is creaking floors and hollow front steps that alert the presence of every visitor with reverberating sound. It is sunlight filtering through stain glass, casting rainbow prisms onto walls. It is potty training and college aid applications and bills and our dog Brandy barking at the mailman every single day. It is the sound of music seeping through the walls, the smell of turpentine and linseed oil wafting through the air vents. It is creativity and laughter and exhaustion. It is cats hogging up all the sleeping space on my side of the bed every night.

Home is the rooster crowing while the garbageman loudly clangs and crashes his way down the street. It is the absolute stillness of 3am, the cat puking at 4 am, the neighbors Harley revving up at 5 am, and the baby waking up singing at 6 am. It is the Christmas season and flu season and allergy season and tax season and back to school supplies and awkward family get togethers. It is laughing together about all of these things in the aftermath.

It is the quiet inner knowing that against the bustle, chaos, struggle, joy and strains of being a family lies the absolute perfection of love in action.

Home is anywhere my husband and children are.