Five Minute Friday: Home

Every week I join Gypsy Mama and lots of other ladies for just five minutes of fun.

She writes: This is the time of the week when we steal those five minutes while the kids are fingerpainting the dining room table, the neighbor’s dog has stopped barking, or the microwave is popping some corn to splash down some thoughts on paper.

In just five minutes.

To paint a verbal picture. To just write and not worry if it’s just write or not.

Here is my five minutes:

Our houses are not our homes. Our houses are not what support us, what will get us through a tough day, nor what will encourage us when the going gets tough.

Our families are our homes.

It’s too easy to forget that sometimes, and too easy to think that our house is what is important.

Is it clean enough? Is it neat enough? Is it beautiful enough?

I recently was watching some old home movies, and saw images of a home my parents purchased when I was around 8 years old. I was surprised at how it needed paint, and how it could have used some landscaping and other face lift type work. It just looked a little tired, probably a lot like my parents were, as they worked so hard to make a living and bring up seven children who were born in a span of eight years.

They worked their hearts out to make that house a home.

I don’t remember ever thinking the house was in disrepair. What I do remember is that we always had company, we would have some kids over for what I now look at as short term informal foster care. Our home was full of love and giving, of awesome chocolate chip cookies, of everything my parents had to offer.

It did not matter that the house needed some work and that it wasn’t featured in Better Homes and Gardens. What mattered was the love that filled every nook and cranny.

STOP-Five minutes are up.

Oh drat, again I am not quite done.

For that love, for the parenting that was full of wisdom and guidance, for parents who lived the behaviors they encouraged in us, creating a home that overflowed with love and laughter, I am eternally grateful.

So thank you from the bottom of my heart, mom and dad, as I sit here on the verge of Father’s Day, with Mother’s Day still visible in the rear view mirror, thank you for teaching me so much, but especially that it is not my house, but my family that is my home.

And for your enjoyment, dear readers, here is my “home”, my siblings and my mom and dad.

My wonderful parents, taken a few years later than the accompanying image of us kids.

Here we are, the Seven 1960's siblings, in all our fashionable glory. I am the one in the yellow shirt.