Home Sweet Home

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
~Maya Angelou~

There are countless axioms regarding home and the emotions the word conjures up in us all.  For me, the 4 hour trip from Reno over the Sierra mountains through the forest woods to my grandparents' home was the epitomy of this feeling.  For the reasons one might imagine, things were not always pleasant at my house when I was growing up...we lived in a not so great neighborhood where "things" happened to all of the children at the hands of neighborhood predators...
but going to Grandma's house, knowing that she would have fresh sheets that smelled of clean innocence, warm buttered bear-claws for breakfast, and all the hugs and all the stories I could listen to...falling asleep listening to mama and gramma talking into the wee hours of the morning. It was the best.  From my earliest memories, I recall feeling such a sense of peace when we would travel there.
It is a bit peculiar that I felt this way about going there because I had some health issues which were magnified by being there:  I suffered from terrible allergies to the cat(s), chickens, and dogs they had, the black walnuts in the yard, fresh fruit, and all of the unusual molds, pollens, and other things that Northern California had to offer.  I should have had tubes put in my ears had they known to do that back then - instead, the tonsils and adenoids came out at age 6 - in an effort to try to curb the ever present ear aches, nose bleeds that lasted for hours, etc...all epic failures as my daughters would say.  Grandma used to tell me "Now, Shelli Anne, don't you bleed on my couch!"
SO, the realist in me knows all of these facts, but the Pollyanna in me just remembers the wonderful talks and rides in the car with Grandma (I am sure everyone else was there as well), playing in the yard without worry of...being at peace with myself and the world - really, being without a care.  For me, this was my childhood "home" - not where I lived, but where I, as in Maya's quote, above, felt safe and at home.