Friday, December 23, 2016

Home for Christmas

 
 During the holiday season no matter what responsibilities you now have or where you are your thoughts turn to home. Not the one where you live now, but the one where you grew up to become the person your are today. 
   I know very few people who actually lived "early TV perfect lives" and memories tend to become colored with the passing years, both good and bad.
   The fact remains it was our home and holidays tend to make us want to return to our childhood with all the longing for glittering trees and wrapped packages. I don't think it mattered who the gift was for, it was the mystery of not knowing what was inside that was important.
   More than sixty years have passed since I left the home where I grew up in a four story pre-Victorian brick and even more since a fellow high school friend's grandmother was born it the same dwelling. It was built somewhere between 1860 and 1865 during the Civil War.

   Did it have ghosts of lives past? We thought so when my father put black walnuts out on the attic floor to cure and squirrels got in to replenish their winter food supply. We woke up to eerie thumps and bumps above our heads as the little creatures scurried with their bounty-rolling the nuts across the floor.
   That house has stood on its 22 inch thick limestone foundations through eight wars, numerous police actions, earth quakes, tornadoes, ice storms, and a collision with a runaway lumber truck. It is those foundations that I think of during the holiday season and the lessons I learned from people long gone. They were strong and enduring with beliefs that span centuries.
   Be thankful that we live in a country whose founders provided for beliefs and celebrate the season in your home as your forefathers did. In essence it is a privilege granted to few members of humanity that populates this planet Earth.
   Home for Christmas is a distant memory that floats through our minds. Would we return if we could? I don't think so, old memories are just those; of times past that will never come again. Today we live in a house that has become our home. We've lived here more than twice as long as we did in the house where we grew up, but still it is permissible to remember our other home for a few moments during our busy day.

   Have a wonderful Holiday Season this year and ever year.
Nash Black

    


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