Home.

Georgia and I went to down to visit my parents this past weekend.  We hadn't been there since 4th of July weekend and going home in the fall is one of my favorite times to go.  Maybe it's because the fall is when I usually left home growing up as school would start or I'd head back to college--so it feels good to do the opposite, maybe it's because I just love everything more in the fall--how can you not?, or maybe....and most definitely....it's because, my mom, who excels at making home a haven hits a grand-slam in this department when it comes to the fall.  Her mums on the front porch look cozier than anyone else's, she has cinnamon candles burning in the kitchen, she has vases of yellow and orange leaves on the counters, she'll have my dad build a fire in the fire-place before anyone else does it, and a pan of baked spaghetti in the oven on a rainy night.  It feels good to go home.

And what I love, is that Georgia can sense how good it feels to go to Gaga and Pop Pop's house too.  Every fifteen or twenty minutes on the two and half hour ride down she'd shriek, "We're going to Gaga's."

I didn't grow up in this house.  My parents called me about two weeks before Thanksgiving break my freshman year of college and told me they'd sold my child-hood home and we'd be moving into a new one when I was home over Thanksgiving.  I might have been a little sad.....sure, but I know I wasn't devastated in any way.  I knew it would be fine, I knew that the new house they'd bought would feel like home in no time, and more importantly I knew that it didn't matter where we lived, my mom could make it feel like the most welcoming, comfortable, lived-in in the best of ways, you-never-want to leave places I'd know. Just like good moms do.

Now that I'm raising my own daughter I appreciate home more than I ever even knew that I did........and I've always appreciated it a lot.  I want our home to be a place that Georgia....and Chris want to rest in--both physically and mentally, I want home to be a place that is easy....and not easy because hard stuff never gets done there.....but easy because the end result is growth and love, I want home to be a place that is cathartic, comfortable, welcoming, familiar, and remarkably part of who Georgia becomes.....how she identifies herself.

And the thing I've always realized about home is that it's about the people who reside there; have resided there,  more than it's the walls that enclose those people.  Because no matter where my mom and dad's home is, there will always be..........

'Fairy Toast'..................

playing Annie and Christmas carols (no matter the time of year.....it's just that I can actually remember how to play a pretty good Winter Wonderland) on the piano.........

Gaga's bath toys..........

rainy day trips to the Henry Ford museum.......or just anywhere really...........

And I just love this picture of my mom and Georgia that I caught through the curtain of a photo-booth so I had to include it.  

..........the fact that my mom lets us just trash the house with toys, and books, and suitcases because she really just cares that we're there, my dad taking Georgia on walks around the neighborhood with the dog, the room upstairs with all of our family photo albums that I look through almost every time I'm home, the little jars of candy that you find hidden in different spots each time you're there (and they're usually Rolo's or tootsie rolls--keep that up mom), the softest sheets on the guest beds, my dad begging me to go to the basement and take something home with me, music playing all the time, little cozy lamps lit in remote corners of every room, and.........just.......my parents.....being my parents.

I know that not everyone has the same nostalgia about their own homes for various reasons......but what I also know is that we can vow to create that for our own kids no matter what we've come from.  It doesn't take money, a beautiful house, fancy vacations, gourmet food, and certainly not perfect people.  It takes parents willing to work hard to make simple things, amazing things.........cold nights, warm nights........crazy lives outside the home, calm nights in the living room.........the routine, the definition of safe........and our kids, the most important thing to ever cross our paths.......really and truly the most important thing.

So thanks mom and dad.....for living out the definition of home.....