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This week: Going Home Again Edited by: Fyn  
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Home is where your story begins.~~Annie Danielson
(Wasn't this just the coolest quote to find!)
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.~~Melody Beattie
Home is where one starts from.~~T.S.Eliot
The more one does and sees and feels, the more one is able to do, and the more genuine may be one's appreciation of fundamental things like home, and love, and understanding companionship.~~Amelia Earhart
If you go anywhere, even paradise, you will miss your home.~~Malala Yousafzai
When I was growing up, my mother was always a friend to my siblings and me (in addition to being all the other things a mom is), and I was always grateful for that because I knew she was someone I could talk to and joke with, and argue with and that nothing would ever harm that friendship.~~Marlo Thomas
Sweater, n.: garment worn by child when its mother is feeling chilly.~~Ambrose Bierce
(One of the things my brain 'heard' this weekend --'I'm cold; go put on a sweater.)
Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home
A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there
Which seek thro' the world, is ne'er met elsewhere
Home! Home!
Sweet, sweet home!
There's no place like home
There's no place like home!
An exile from home splendor dazzles in vain
Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again
The birds singing gaily that came at my call
And gave me the peace of mind dearer than all
Home, home, sweet, sweet home
There's no place like home, there's no place like home!
~~song adapted from American actor and dramatist John Howard Payne's 1823 opera Clari, or the Maid of Milan,
Home is where the heart is.~~Perhaps the earliest of all is in a work by Joseph Neal in 1847. However, some people believe that the phrase was said earlier, in the mid seventeenth century, by the jurist Edmund Coke.
There are hermit
souls that live withdrawn
In the peace of their self-content;
There are souls, like stars, that dwell apart,
In a fellowless firmament;
There are pioneer souls that blaze their paths
Where highways never ran;-
But let me live by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.~~Sam Walter Foss (1858-1911)
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My youngest daughter (now in her mid-30s) went to drive by where my mom lived when the kids were younger. Mom has been gone now for fifteen years and neither of us has been back there since. She lived in what was an old brick house that had been made into two (or was it three?) apartments. We sat there in the car and took some pictures. I decided I wanted a picture of she and I in front of it and thought it might be a good idea to knock on the door and let the folks inside know what we were doing. An elderly gentleman answered and upon hearing what we were about, invited us in. Two total strangers!
He told us how when he bought the house he got rid of the apartments and put it back to how it was supposed to be. Mom would have been thrilled! He (His name was Leon) gave us a tour of the entire house, shared stories with us. Honestly, I am not sure who was more excited! Cara and I were just about in tears, he was enthusiastic and happy to know how much it meant to us. There was still a lot of 'Mom' there. He had pictures all around, as had my mom. He had the nooks and crannies filled with 'stuff', layered with meaning, as had my mom. It was absolutely awesome. We ended up being there almost an hour, which flew by in memories and funny moments.
The house (his, mom's) wrapped us all in a hug that was warm and momentous, funny and happy. Although I never said a word, at the time because my daughter would have dissolved in tears and he might have thought me a true lunatic, I could swear I could still smell Mom's perfume!! It was a signature memory (I suppose?) because walking into Mom's it was the first thing that always stuck me. One could always smell Estee Lauder's 'Youth Dew' perfume at Mom's or as Cara would say, at Grammy's. Heart smiles.
We'd always known the house was 'old' but we hadn't known it was the first house built in Lexington, Mi -- built sometime before 1873. Now there's an historical marker outside --another thing Mom would get a big kick out of!
Cara and I 'did' go home --even though neither of us ever actually 'lived' there. It was where Mom was, so therefore, it was and in a weird way still is-- home.
We wandered the town seeing the Lexington General Store complete with the same old wooden floors that still creak, and the great glass-fronted candy counter where one can still get 'three of those, two red licorice strings, and seven of the red ones' for mere pennies and have them stuck in an old paper sack. Which we, of course, did! *big smile* We Christmas shopped the newer stores and walked down to Lake Huron as we had so many times before. Windy, brutally cold and snowing! It was flat out perfection.
We said our goodbyes (for the time being) to Lexington and headed down to Frankenmuth for the rest of our trip. We arrived home in pouring rain, unloaded the car and collapsed in the dining room. Our feet hurt from miles of walking. Our wallets protested their empty status and the table was covered with bags and bags of Christmas goodies acquired on a most successful shopping trip. My hubby had a pot roast in the crock pot and it smelled delicious. The new pup scampered around underfoot deliriously happy the Mom was back from wherever she'd vanished to and it had been like forever in puppy-time since I'd left. Cara stretched with a sore but happy stretch and said, "Gosh it feels good to be home!" She and I smiled at that given our trip back in time a day prior. But she was right. In yet another way, we'd come home.
~~*~~
Will some of what we'd experienced find its way into my writing? How can it not? The concept of 'home' --while different to everybody, still evokes emotions, memories and, in our case, an extreme case of the 'warm-fuzzies.' Characters in my Nano-book have many different concepts of what home means to them, as does each and every person on the planet. Some lovely, some not so pleasant. Yet each regardless of fictionalized or 'real' (Hmmm ... aren't they all 'real'?) goes on the create or recreate their own version of what home means to them. Home is so much more than the roof over one's head; more than the stuff one acquires, more than the people who reside there. Home is as much in the heart as it is outside it.
The other day someone told me that they never know what to write about. Anything, everything! Each and every experience we gave is a jumping off point. Little things that happen in our lives are fodder for a short story, a poem, a novel because what we experience, what we have an emotional response to will connect with people either through a shared similar experience or because it is something they wish to experience. Choosing what to write about is simply a matter of taking these moments and building on them; expanding the story, sharing that visceral emotion or using the details of it to describe what a character is doing/feeling. It has been my experience that virtually everything we do can be used to further a story, to push it farther than we might think possible.
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Picking some older stuff as it gets buried and forgotten ... so dig up some new treasures!
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from Elfindragon who is getting caught up on her reading :)
Elfin Dragon-finally published  writes: More late reading on Observations on a Journey. I loved this piece for your observations of Hawaii. I'm an Air Force Vet and did a couple tours on Oahu. It's true that you can't help but observe everything around you. You spoke of the oil tears in the water at the Arizona Memorial. It was, strangely, the first thing I noticed. And the Missouri brought me home, so to speak. Though an Air Force Vet, I grew up a Navy Brat...running around various ships. Walking around the Missouri was emotional. I find it astounding that what we often observe can also take us back to what we knew.
the Wordy Jay  says: Congratulations on your daughter's beautiful wedding! Your account of the Big Day was so much fun to read! 
Osirantinous  comments: What a lovely day, Fyn, and you're right - it's all the frantic lead-up to the big moment that makes that moment big and awesome. The moments of panic and forgetfulness and angst (anger, doubt, freak-out etc). Not much these days runs to a perfect smoothness, and we need to remember that. I've two characters getting married shortly, one of them forgets his vows and the other is led up the aisle by his neice and nephews who'll probably trip him up - but it's all about the 'I do' in the end (hopefully) and working through the unexpected to get there.
~Celeb~ adds: This newsletter really hit home for me. I am going to keep it in my inbox for a while so that I can review everything attached to it. Thank you for sharing.
:)
willwilcox comments: It's funny I should read this after the Mrs. and I had a huge falling out. I'm going to try to be better for her. Thank you,
-Bill
We all have our moments when we need to remember why we are married in the first place :)
blimprider says: Fun tales of marriage! I offer one more "platitude" for your collection: Early in our marriage, my wife and I had a plaque in our living room that said, "Marriage is not about finding the right partner; it is about being the right partner." My mom hated that plaque. Of course, she had, without the slightest exaggeration, more husbands than I've had traffic tickets, so go figure...
EXCELLENT advice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Christopher Roy Denton  jokes: Congratulations on your daughter's wedding. (But shouldn't this have been in the "Drama" newsletter?! 
But I don't write that one! LOL
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For Authors: November 15, 2017 Issue [#8604]
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