On the Way Home

Sunday began in the easy way it does with people close knit. Through the always-open front door marched family and friends, neighbors, kids and dogs, all with boisterous greetings that filled the house. Food was everywhere: on the table, the counter and sideboard, the stove. Spring dresses and hair bows (shoes, even) and guitars, coolers with icy beverages, a kiddie pool and bags of water balloons. It must be spring in a life of a young family!

Before jumping into the day, I took a little walk around the neighborhood, watching it bloom with families laughing and double parked, waving to neighbors in their small town way. Every single yard was ablaze with flowers of yellows and reds and blues and violets. Would life be like this every day if families weren't separated by freeways? I remember when life had this pace and the washing machine constantly ran.


Family clusters, we see it less and less. Life pulls us every which-way, and have come to think that only by striking out on our own can we truly become self reliant.

Multi-generational life would, I'm sure, focus our commitment more on the virtues and standards of the family unit. Knowing people that way, my sons and his daughters engaged in their lives - not just when the house is dusted and the fridge is full - would require a more developed interpersonal skillset. There'd be none of this no-talking feud business tolerated. I expect squabbles would be unilaterly handled in the same way children's squabbles are: toss them into a room together until they fight their way to peace.

How great that recitals and honor roll ceremonies would be attended on Wednesday afternoons and that the Vice Principal wouldn't strike terror in the hearts of our teens as much as fessing up to it at the dinner table.

Grandpa would be there to tuck a $20 into the palm of a kid heading off on a date, or pin a corsage on his granddaughter's Confirmation robe. Our natural treasures would know by heart the way to Grandpa's house because it would always be on the way home. Now that would be Heaven.