Home is the best. I've realized that home isn't where your house is built, but where your family and loved ones are. The great traveler Richard Halliburton loved to go to countries, and experience everything there is to experience... like sleeping on top of the Kheops, or sneaking into the gardens at the Taj Mahal for the night, or climbing the Matterhorn in the dead of winter... and he almost always rode first class on the train with a third class ticket. But even he said that traveling only makes one appreciate one's home all the more - it makes him eager to be back home. As astounding as foreign places are, as wonderful as they seem, everything is nothing compared to the warmth that exists within the family. I suppose I am talking from personal experience, so please keep that in mind as I continue.
Dorothy, in all her adventures in Oz, though it was all exciting and wonderful, yet said in the end: "There's no place like home." As awful as "the witch" (I forget her name before the dream) seemed, Dorothy was more than happy to go home, and find everything the same.
"Home is where the heart is." It's true that the people we've grown up with, the people who have seen us through everything and have been there through all our failures and mistakes... not just the bad times but also the best times we have. These are the people we know the best, and love the best, and where they are is where we long to be. When my older brother left home to go work down in TX, and later in FL, I felt like one of my limbs had been torn out. And how happy we were when he came home! What joyous, happy times! I wish they would always come back, but the fact that they won't makes the memories all the sweeter.
We went to London in September, as all of you saw by the posts I did while there. And we missed home very much. It was exciting and adventurous being in a different place... a country with history hundreds of years older than ours. (Meaning that Jamestown was founded in 1607 and everything... though Columbus visited there in 1400's, and Vikings before that... there was hardly anything going on before the English came.) It was thrilling. And today, I found myself wanting to go back. There was so much we hadn't seen... but then I thought, there is so much we saw for real that a lot of people haven't seen. We were blessed by that trip. When we saw the moist atmosphere above North Carolina on our way home, I thought: "Ah, America. How lovely to be home!" And then Philadelphia... And all the security people smiled and said: "Welcome home." And I thought... No matter where I go, nobody from that country will say "Welcome home" to me... Nobody who works in the airport and is a complete stranger. Because that's not where I belong. It's here, in my country, with my family, and as long as my family is together, as sappy as it sounds, there will always be joy. And being together will help us all to get through anything. If we ever moved, we would still all be together, so who cares where we are? This is a huge conviction for me, especially since I don't like Cleveland all that much. But in spite of it all, I am happy, and I do have my siblings, and both my parents... what cause have I to complain?
I love being home. I love visiting places, and I love coming home and sleeping in my own bed. It's one of the most wonderful things in the world. I love coming home and talking with my dear family for long, long hours. (Well, I love doing that anyways, but there's something especially special about it when you come home.) I just absolutely love it....
Oh, do you know that the BEST is??!!
FAMILY VACATION! :D
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