Home oh Home

A bit back I wrote about how I felt home was where I came from as a child. That childhood house where I grew up before our family started our travels. I have since learned that each and every place I have lived has been "home" because people made it that way. When I went back to Wisconsin this past week I did not expect to feel that homey feeling. I thought I would feel like I was just visiting another place, but that was not the fact. I got to see places where I lived. Places that made me the person I am today. Just as the apartments in Libya have added to whom I am now as has the tin shack and termites in Guam. All of those places have lead me to the place I am now and the home I create for my children and me on a daily basis. So this is not just another house... all those places were not just other houses... what makes a home is what happens within the walls of that house. The love, the laughter, the silliness, the tears... if only the walls could talk and tell the stories of the homes they have been.

Peace,
G

Libya and Ladybugs

I think it is interesting how memories come back to us that were lost in the mountains of our minds. Just yesterday as I was hanging clothes up outside - which I haven't done in years since we don't do that in AZ... I had a flash back to days in Libya and when we lived in an appartment and would have to walk the steps to the roof to hang the laundry. I never minded the hike up the stairs and being only 11ish probably enjoyed spending the time with mom as I don't remember my brother helping with such chores; although he may have. I never even disliked the hanging up of the clothes... but the taking down was something that frightened me completely to my bones. You see in Libya the ladybugs would cling to the laundry and the laundry clips by the thousands... yes the thousands. I hated when those you could get to fly away flew away because it was like a swarm. Since there were so many at one time on the roof and on the clothes they never all flew away - many stayed. What I hated most was opening and closing the clothes pins... because the squishing sound of the ladybug that had just been sacrificed so that we could have semi-clean sheets. God how I used to be so fearful of that chore. Thank goodness that is over with.

Peace,
G