Home Sweet Home

A response to a prompt

“Today is a day to reflect and thank our home for everything it provides for us.” ~ Trista Ainsworth

Thanks, Trista Signe Ainsworth, for this prompt to write about our homes and what they mean to us.

Actually, I thank God for my home and all that it means to me.

We’ve lived in our current home for forty years now. It has provided the usual: shelter, a place to relax and to work (we worked from our home offices for twenty years), a place to raise our family (a son and daughter.)

Now it is just the two of us rattling around, but we love the space we have, home offices (dens) for each of us. We have ample room to work and relax. We do our own thing in the morning (I do my daily RWR — reading, writing and responding) while my wife sews and works on various projects. We both like to read and our home contains many books.

We have our noon meal together and often watch the midday news and weather.

We meet together in the living room or kitchen in the afternoon for tea or coffee and conversation. In the afternoon we may also venture out to walk or run errands.

Evenings, after the dishes are done and teeth brushed, it is time to relax. We watch a video or a series on Netflix. Lately, we’ve been watching “Wanted,” an Australian thriller that keeps us on the edge of our seats. Before “Wanted” we watched and enjoyed all of the “Madam Secretary” series. Both series helped us appreciate the calm and drama-free lives we have and the safety of our home.

The past few years we’ve been investing in our home, replacing windows and doors one year and remodeling the master bathroom another year. A couple of years ago we installed an underground irrigation system which makes it easy to keep the lawn green during the droughts we’ve been experiencing lately.

We enjoy our home and cannot imagine living anywhere else.

The house sits on a large lot in a quiet neighborhood. We have deer and rabbits and foxes and squirrels visiting us from time to time. I’ve written about deer and other wildlife. They are fun to see even though they graze on the buds of flowers and shoots of plants we’d hoped to see bloom.

The summer before last, during the COVID lockdown, we enjoyed watching, from our back screened porch, a fox chase a squirrel up a tree, then sit patiently and wait for him to come down. The squirrel leaped from tree to tree and eventually found the safety of his nest high in the trees away from the fox. No dinner for that fox.

This morning, as I contemplate the joy of our home, the safety and serenity we feel here, I’m reminded, too, that we should not become overly attached to earthly treasures. We hear about and see on TV so many whose homes have been destroyed by storms, fires, and earthquakes. As I write tornadoes are destroying homes in the south-central parts of this country. We feel for the loss those homeowners are experiencing, and I wonder from time to time how I would deal with such a tragedy. That thought makes me cherish what I have all the more while I have it.

Sometimes I think about the nomadic American Indians who had no concept of land ownership. They truly practiced “leave no trace” camping. They hunted game and when it moved, they moved. When winter came, they moved south or camped around hot springs. Their homes were teepees they carried with them.

Today, I’m grateful that we live in a society that honors land and homeownership. So long as I pay the property taxes, I can live here undisturbed. No wars are raging nearby, no storms or fires threaten. Today, we are warm and safe. May it always be so.

Thank you, again, Trista, for inspiring me to think about my home and what it means to me. So much is tenuous in this life, we should never take anything for granted, but appreciate everything, especially our homes.

Happy reading, writing, and appreciating, dear friends!