Not so much, at least for many of us...
Honor thy mother and father . . .
Get on your knees and pray, pledging allegiance “to the wall” (as Paul Simon phrased it.
Home . . . a good Christian upbringing
I know, I know, when you read that word “home” some of you, many of you, thought of your home didn’t you?
Not the house you grew-up in so much, although that was part of it. Nor the ways you really felt there, much of the time.
Maybe your memory includes the neighborhood, the town/city/suburb and the pencil markings on the door-trim where your height was tracked over the years.
Ever notice how many pictures there were of you as a little kid or a baby and how far fewer pics there were and so many fewer pencil marks the higher and higher up the door-trim they went until they finally just stopped altogether?
For many of us, home is that place you now avoid because why revisit times of fear, loneliness, and bullshit piled upon bullshit?
Nope, when some of you read or hear that word “Home” you go all Norman Rockwell, “The Homecoming”
The big happy family: Granny, Little Becky and Bucky and Ma and Pa and the big turkey ready to be carved-up and the soldier boy back safe and sound, In the Norman Rockwell era, he usually had his legs still attached/still working, and everything, less so in later wars.
But the truth is for many of us, home is NOT where the heart is: certainly not for artists, future drunks, and many other human beings.
For many of us home is that place, whether from your past or in the present, or any time, always, where you could neither rise above, escape, or live up to the promises made to you, Or that you made to others, inside those rooms.
For many of us, home was constructed of sad, small walls that seemed so towering, sometimes protective, sometimes torturous, sometimes solid and real. And sometimes, for some of us, simply by closing our eyes, the place became invisible for a precious few moments. And that was the best we could do.
For many of us, home was indeed, thank goodness for “once upon a time,” but certainly NOT for “happily ever after.”
