Making Ones House a Home

This past weekend we had my mother as a house guest. She is always a welcomed visitor and she has a good time when she is here. And since I have been chastized by her for my recent lack of blogging I have forgone sleep and chosen, at one o'clock in this am, to commit some memories from the weekend to electronic posterity.

There were four distinct and memorable things that happened to me over this weekend.

We make our houses

For some time on this blog I had pondered the state of clutter that is our house. Do we make the clutter? Is an unkempt house the sign of a cluttered soul? What kind of people are we that we have boxes of minutae stuffed under our tables?

Answer? Linda and I woke up early on Saturday morning and make pancakes, sausage, toasted bagels and juice for mom. As we always do we were also enjoying some morning banter, some funny stories, and planning out our day together. At some point, mom had woken up and came downstairs with, almost, tears welling in her eyes.

Mid-pancake flip I wondered what had happened... had she stubbed a toe? Was there a cat problem? Did the guest bathroom toilet explode? (Don't get me started on the guest bathroom toilet). Quite simply she said:

You have no idea how nice it is to wake up to the smell of such good food and the sound of your laughter. It fills my heart to hear you interact.

Thank you, mom. Without question, clutter and all, we have a happy home and we do make sure that we stop -- often -- and smell the roses. Cleanliness is what makes a good house. Love, chatter, and a little detritus is what much a good home. I vastly prefer living in a home to living in a house. After all... What point is comfort if we never interrupt our immediacy and enjoy it?

-Ed

As an aside, I was trying out a new pancake mix and used too much. The resulting pancake-zillas were nearly an inch thick. Good. Delicious even with pure maple syrup. But these things were meals in and of themselves.