Home Defined

Robert Frost had it nearly right. 'Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in.' It's right up there in the quotable quotes of Frost, along with the lines about good fences, and the road not traveled. Less known is the bit that comes right after - 'I should have called it Something you somehow haven't to deserve.'

It's a bit passive isn't it? It assumes a burden on the part of whoever provides the home, and an equal or greater burden on you because you're going to be such a chore for someone. Maybe there's virtue in that for both; being the person who lands on the doorstep and the person who opens the door, but Frost's quotes seem to take the choice right out of it and I have a hard time seeing virtue without choice.

Besides, I've plumbed the depths of home - only there are no depths, at least not in mine. There is no limit that I've discovered although there are certainly guidelines for the sake of mutual sanity. I know better than Frost, at least in this.

Home is where, when you show up with no money and two children, pregnant with a husband, they take you in and tell you they love you. They share their rooms, they shove over their furniture and their hard-won silence to allow you in. They do it with generosity, they do it with grace, and they do it knowing full well what it will mean. That's home. And that's what I have.