There's No Place Like Home

By Anna, Phil, Grace, Barbara, Mary, Jean, and Sarah

 

When I go away and then come home

it feels so good to be home. 

You miss your home.

 

I never left home until I went to private school.

You live in school.  On Sundays we went to church,

because it was a Catholic school.

We lived at school and only went home

on Saturday and Sunday and vacation. 

I loved it.  I did not know the difference between both homes.

I enjoyed it, but my sister would want to go home all the time.

That kind of life you don’t have much friendly kids. 

When I had children, we decided not to raise them like that. 

 

Home means to me being with my husband. 

I just lost him two years ago.  Home is anywhere

where he is together with me and the children. 

As long as we’re all together, that’s home. 

Home is very important to me

because I miss it very much.  Makes no difference

what’s in the house or what we eat,

 the main thing is that we’re all together. 

It’s just very important. 

 

I think of my Mom when I think of home. 

She could do anything. 

She gardened and cooked and canned.  House painting. 

My dad never turned a tack.  He was too important. 

He acted like he was too important. 

He never wiped a dish or did anything. 

As us kids grew up we helped Mom.  She never was mean to us. 

She was always encouraging.  Get those grades in school! 

She was a wonderful person.  She lived to be in her eighties

and she had nine kids.  I don’t know how she ever did it. 

I think she was born in 1885. 

My older brother went to World War II. 

But she never taught me how to do anything. 

My job was stir the gravy.  That’s about what she taught me.

Another thing I think of about home is my mother

used to give us directions about what we were going

to do that day.  Like I was going to help her clean

whether I liked it or not.  And my two brothers

were out in the garden cutting the grass

whether they liked it or not.  She gave them directions. 

 

Home to me means a house. 

My house was very important to me. 

I miss it very much. 

 

I have a pool around the house. 

All the grandchildren come to go swimming

and the grown-ups, too, and my neighbors.

They love it, you know?  They’re all there for it. 

 

When I think about home, I think about fishing. 

Whenever my husband wanted to go fishing,

he’d say “Are you coming with me?” 

On a weekend it was so nice to be on the water

catching the fish and I enjoyed it very much. 

It was so exciting when I caught a fish! 

I just love to be by the water and I used to love to be in the ocean. 

All the people out there fishing.  The splashing of water

and the different colors changing.  Purple, blue would splash. 

We went out sailing a lot and sometimes we saw animals

from the ocean that would splash out of the ocean. 

We saw dolphins jumping. 

We would just sit and watch it. 

I’ll tell you the nicest thing is when the sun goes down

and you’re sitting on the boat watching the sun set,

which is beautiful.  All different colors.

 

I like to dress up the Christmas tree

and decorate it and put the lights on

and light them up at night.  The kids love it! 

You feel like it’s Christmas, you know?

 

Thanksgiving.  That’s when the families get together.

Sometimes you see relatives you haven’t seen in a long time. 

That makes you comfortable, and you love your home. 

You smell the turkey, sweet potatoes, vegetables, and baked pies.

Pumpkin pie.  Everybody gets dressed up and goes

from house to house.  My mother was always the one

that did the cooking.  That’s what I remember

is her getting up almost at dawn to get ready. 

We laid in bed.  We just smelled it.

 

We always had a lot of kids in our house.  We sat

around talking, playing games, that’s the main thing. 

All kinds of games.  I had the neighbor’s kids come

around Thanksgiving and they would go around from house

to house, and you did the best you could to give them something.

 

I also remember July 4^th.  That’s when we sat

on the curb and watched the parade.  All the kids

sat on the curbs.  Watched fireworks.  And we saw

all the homegrown veterans.  We went swimming

on the Fourth of July.  I used to like to watch the fireworks.

It’s so pretty in the evening.  They would do it by the ocean.

They made the fireworks go off so they wouldn’t fall

into someone’s house.  It’s a beautiful thing to watch

what they throw up in the air. 

 

It feels good to home.