to know it for the first time.

This isn't a Christmas blog. Not really. It's a response to home and family. Growing older, my friends - and I - wrestle with what home has come to mean. For some Christmas is the same happy time it ever was, and for others (I think most) it's a glaring reminder of everything we didn't turn out to be. The one time a year we all have to sit down and look at one another, regardless of whether we like what we see.

Family is one kind of home. The inescapable kind. :) But true home is where we belong. It can be family or any place we're drawn by something bigger than us. I've come to understand we rarely choose where we belong. We can want it to be one place or another, but home is something we have to find and when we get there, we know. Home is the place you walk away from over and over and the path you take leads you always back, and each return brings a deeper love for the place than you knew before. Home is the love that follows you, that brings you back no matter what you had in mind.

What family and home have in common, I think, is that they're never what we expected them to be. They're fraught with disappointment, frustration, and especially, re-evaluation of what we believed was important. Family and home aren't easy, let alone the idyllic images we look to at Christmastime. But with their shortcomings, their stubborness, the secrets we pretend not to know, they're beautiful. Beautiful like we couldn't have the same life without them. And the best of their beauty, or the worst, is that we will always love them. Whether we like it or not.