They're home!

My kids are home. All of them. Steve & I picked up Davy Monday night in Scranton. His friend from school dropped him off at a McDonald's on her way home. Dan, Jacquie & Stacey drove down last night and arrived a little before 10:00 PM. The house is full...overflowing with dufflebags, backpacks, laundry, sleeping bags, pillows, laptops, and bodies of young people. Every time I see my children, I am amazed at the changes in them. They are maturing and they look different, older, wiser...
One thing that doesn't seem to change, however, is their desire for Mom's cooking. I baked cookies last night and was showered with words of love....for chocolate chip cookies! "It smells like home..." someone said.
Home. As a parent, I feel I need to provide that homey atmosphere for them, especially now. Their father is moving out of the home in which they grew up into a new house with his new wife and her family on the day after Thanksgiving. My kids' possessions - anything they did not take to college with them - are in boxes and will be moved to the new house. They will have a bedroom to sleep in when they go back to Bolton but it won't be 'home.' It won't have the three sets of handprints in the cement around the pool, it won't have the burn marks on the kitchen cabinet where the toaster caught on fire, it won't have the swingset and the 'clubhouse' in the woods, it won't have the memories of flying bats, clogged toilets, birthday parties on the deck and sleepovers in the rec room.
I was talking to Jacquie about how her grandmother's house is not the same...its life is gone...it's musty and damp and depressing now. She said that it is not a home anymore...it's just a house. She's right - home is where you live...wherever you are. Wherever your mom is baking cookies. That is home! Welcome home, guys!