Levi and Violet are what some might call "home bodies". They love to be home. Whenever we are anywhere, no matter how fun or exciting, there comes a point when either one or both of them have had enough fun and excitement and just want to go home. I don't understand this, because we are home so much of the time, that I usually can't wait to get away from home and enjoy some time with other people. My husband is also more of a "home body", so they get it from nowhere strange. Levi loves to have people come to visit his home, but he would just rather enjoy visits at our home instead of going elsewhere. Sometimes, even when we're home, Levi asks to go home.
Grandma and Grandpa came to our home, and Levi and Violet could not have been happier. However, when it came time for them to leave and take the older kids back to Iowa, I knew we would have some trouble. I suggested that they might want to wait until after Levi and Violet went down for a nap before they left, and they agreed. Levi was onto them. They wanted hugs before he went down for a nap, and he started asking questions, "Are you going somewhere? Are you going back home?" Then comes the moral question of whether or not to lie to him to keep him calm. They just responded that they weren't leaving for a little while yet... not a lie. We were in the clear.
He had a nice, calm nap while Grandma and Grandpa left with the older kids and Mark left for work, as he is on afternoon shift this week. This left me free for a short nap - which is a rarely savored treat for me. I was awakened a fairly short time later by the pounding of Levi steps. He had woken a little earlier than I had hoped, and the cadence of his loud footsteps was unmistakable. He was looking for something - or someone. He burst into my bedroom and started panic breathing as he asked, "Where's Grandma?! I can't find Grandma!" I got to be the awful person to break the news to him, which I guess is fitting, since it was my idea to have them leave during his nap stupor in the first place. "Grandma's not here." To which he responded, "She went home?" "Yes," I replied, "Grandma went home." Then came the sobbing. He wouldn't let me hug him or hold him. I asked him to come sit with me, but he just took off on his hunt for someone else. He came back a few moments later, "Where's Dad?" I got to tell him that Dad was at work. Oh, filth... thy name is "mom". My open arms were again met with a cold shoulder.
Well, I offered to take him to his other grandma's house, which he finally agreed was a semi-suitable substitute until we arrived there, and he realized he still wasn't at the grandma's house he wanted to be at. Then he just stood at the door whimpering and traumatized. He was somewhat eventually sated at Grandma's house, but he was still asking to go home and if other Grandma and the big kids were at our house. As I put the two little ones to bed alone this evening, I realized how lonely it was around here without my older ones, and I felt sad for the lonely heart of my little boy too.
HOME. The word inspires feelings of warmth and happiness in most of our hearts. We may associate home with rest, relaxation, a sense of belonging, coziness, and fulfillment. How is it that home rarely meets our expectations or hopes? For most of us, adults at least, home is a place filled with to-do lists... lawn mowing, bill paying, honey-do lists, house keeping, etc. I love my home, but I have a difficult time just sitting down and enjoying it. Sometimes home is a place with family strife. Sometimes it brings us frustration, restlessness, discontentment, or loneliness. As I've often found, even in a house full of people, it's possible to feel lonely at home.
I am starting to think that home is an idea or concept that we were created to desire. The yearning for home isn't just in our hearts - those of us who have known a happy home. It is the desire of all humanity. We all have an ideal of home that even the most wonderful of houses and families fall short of delivering. We return home for family reunions or we tour the house or town of our childhood, and the feeling we're hoping to return to or obtain is just not there. Where is it? When Levi is home and says, "I want to go home," he's stating a longing that isn't insanity or immaturity or human glitch. It's actually the deepest form of sanity, maturity, and right - a desire, like so many of our desires (and to our agony), that the physical realm cannot possibly quench. Home isn't just where the heart is. Home is in our hearts. Home is an answer to the question, "Who am I?" It's there, and one of the greatest blessings I can imagine is actually getting to experience the Home that will actually meet up with my hopes and expectations... the Home I was created to want... a place where I will actually, truly, finally belong.
