Show Me The Way To Go Home

After a great visit with our parents, we are back on the road and making our way home. In many ways, it feels like we are leaving one home for another. Home is not a building and it is not an address. Home is the place where your "people" are and the place where you are completely at ease. For the last few days, home for us has been at a retirement community in the far South of Texas.

We have tasted the life of 80 year olds, and though we are much younger, we found ourselves not quite up to the task. In my mind, I had always envisioned their retirement life as quiet and unhurried however it is quite the opposite. They have built themselves a new home and a life that is full of good friends and activities that keep them busy from morning till night. A typical day might include woodworking group, cards tournaments, swimming, sight seeing, shuffleboard tournaments, Dairy Queen bingo, ice cream socials, and some kind of party or social event every evening. If anything, my sisters, brother and I need to go home to relax after trying to keep up with their lifestyle. For us, we can now picture their Texas winter home and their life there - and this will help us to feel that much closer when we are once again back in our Minnesota home, and talk with them about their days.

Now it is time for us to allow them a return to their routine as we return home. We joked with them that it would be so blessedly quiet for them after our noisy visit and that they would need days to recover. The reality is that they were sorry to see us go and we were equally sorry to be leaving. But we cannot linger as we have many miles of our own to travel on a road bringing us back to the rest of our family and back to the routine of the lives that we have each built. We are tired from our visit but it is the best kind of tired leaving us feeling satisfied and our hearts full.

When we were little, our dad would often sing when we took a long road trip. One of his favorite songs is one that I have playing in my mind over and over as we drive leaving one home behind and getting closer to the home we left behind...

"Show me the way to go home.
I'm tired and I want to go to bed.
I had a little drink about an hour ago
And it went right to my head.
No matter where I roam,
Over land or sea or foam.
You will always hear me singing this song,
Show me the way to go home."

Thanks, Mom and Dad, for teaching us what home is and for always sharing your home with us. We love you.