Home Is Where Your Story Begins

I looked over a friend's recent photos on her blog and saw a picture of a wooden bird house with one word written below.  Home.  I had just finished writing about "home" and how my favorite columnist Sharon Randall, defines it.

Seeing that birdhouse made me think of the house Joel made that graces our lilac trees in the backyard. A place wrens nest every year.  And our resident duck couple who come to nest in our neighbor's yard each Spring.  They come back to the neighborhood when the snow leaves, and we look forward to greeting them.  Yesterday we heard our residential female cardinal as she sang her familiar song. The same crazy robin seems to be back after a year of reprieve, a day after we had just talked about robins that continually bang against a window ~ maybe talking about it was a bad idea.  And the deer......our neighbor continues to feed them (sigh) and yesterday I went out on our deck and shooed them away, chasing 6 of them out of our yard and away from another neighbor's, where they were raiding his bird feeder.  I like deer......I do NOT like ticks.  Definitely the animals and birds are holding the belief that Spring is here to stay.

Regarding birds, I wondered why certain ones call Iowa home?  Why do they settle here and not head further north?  What calls them to our corner of the world and are they mostly snow birds returning to their "homes" along with their human counterparts?  Dr. Google says that most have a remarkable ability to come back to a particular place.  They may come back to the same back yard, and even the same tree.  They have cues they use to get there.  They are born with genetically encoded routes, timing, etc. in their brains.  Amazing, isn't it!  Only God.

One of our families has been on a great adventure across the sea, and will be soon be back to their own beds at night.  They have no genetically codes to lead them, but I am thinking they will be expressing the "home sweet home" phrase after plane and time changes and so many days of new places and new things.

Home.  Songs are written about it.  Christmas sentiments make us think of that place we each name. We are not like the birds with inbuilt honing devices to draw us back to the place we came from, yet often we are drawn back...........whether your home was a place of the good, the bad, or the ugly, that world brings up images and emotions for each of us.

I expect we all do our best to make our domestic nests welcoming, restful, and a good place to be. We may not always appreciate our home until we are away from it, though.   Looking around our current place of residence today, I am grateful for the familiar.....the sun streaming in the window across the floor....the cozy sofa with my pile of books close by.  The sound of the furnace as it kicks in to take off the chill.......the large windows that bring the outside in and from where I can view nature.....the sounds of my soulmate doing life.   May the place you lay your head tonight, bring you the peace and contentment longed for.  Home.  So many great quotes about it.

"He is happiest whether king or peasant, who finds peace in his home."

" The magic thing about home is that it feels good to leave, and it feels even better to come back."

"Home is where the heart is."

"There is no place like home".

"Home is people, not a place."

"Home is where your story begins"