Remembering Home

 

It seems to me that Thanksgiving is always a time to consider thoughts of “home”. Returning, remembering and rejoicing, perhaps. This year as most of us gather differently, finding ways to embrace a physical scattering with signs of love and affection, “home” instead of house seems to provide the means of entry.

This year we might find our true homes still welcome us and protect us when we think differently about returning, remembering and rejoicing. We might “return” not to a physical, familiar house but to a space within our hearts of security and love, of nurture and comfort. We carry that with us. 

We might “remember” in order to return. We might remember fires and meals and conversations which might become so vast and numerous as to diminish the memories of strife and turmoil. 

We then might still “rejoice” when the returning and the remembering have contributed to a new present reality, albeit reconstructed, which reminds us that love never fails.

In my own practice this week I have been drawn to a memory of spontaneous dancing after dinner in the front hall of the house I grew up in. When my parents moved to a smaller house, we recreated this ritual in the different entryway, as we gathered up the now next generation to share a moment of pure delight! I remember loving the dancing myself and scrolling my memory for tunes from the decades! My Girl, Blueberry Hill, All I Have to Do is Dream, etc.. but the most significant part and the one which I carry as home was the look on my parents faces when they danced to When I Fall In Love!

I grieve at the physical distance yet rejoice in “it will be forever” part.