Home: Place or Family?

When the smell of fresh baked chocolate chip cookies wafts through the house for hours, my parents know I’m home.

Thanksgiving morning was one of those times. Every ten minutes I took a pan of six cookies out of the toaster oven until they piled up to 49—maybe a few less because there were cookie crumbs on the mouths of every person in the house.

My cookies: carefully packed for transport

I would never dare cook them in our wood fire oven, because I want temperature control. When I tried to cook them in a gas oven at a friend’s house, they came out mini scones. My toaster oven at home is the only place I can properly bake my famous chocolate chip and dried cranberry cookies so that they are perfectly thin and buttery.

My cookies were my contribution to our Thanksgiving dinner. As I carefully handled each cookie dough scoop, I infused it with love for my family because that’s what Thanksgiving is all about to me. I was able to pour a little bit of my soul into the cookies aimed at my family members’ stomachs because I was home.

When I left Nashville the previous Saturday I couldn’t have been more excited to go home. I thought of family kayak trips up the Millers River, hikes across the valley and dinners on the deck overlooking my mother’s flourishing green garden.

Wait a second.

Wasn’t I going home to Massachusetts in November? You’d think after living through 19 Novembers in Massachusetts I would know to expect skeleton trees, grey skies and cold breezes.

November in New England is notoriously the most bleak and depressing time of year. There is no lush greenery and warmth of the temperate summers, no colorful leaves of the iconic New England autumn and no rolling hills of glittering snow yet. No, November is all about the cold, grey-brown world pushing everyone inside to hibernate for the winter.

Back in Nashville, fall was just ending and the colors and warmth still lingered for a couple more days. This was the first time I felt a true disconnect between seasons, thanks to my jump home for Thanksgiving. Throughout my previous 19 years, I had been eased slowly into November.

The wealth of food picked before
            Hurricane Irene in August 2011

The shock to my system lasted only a day. After dinner on my first night home, my parents giddily pulled out our Bananagrams set and began to set up a game for us. We were all quiet as we played, our brows furrowed as we searched for words in the collection of tiles. However, once the game was over we exclaimed with glee at the long, complicated words the others found. We didn’t need to compile points; it was simply fun to have a joint activity.

After Bananagrams we moved onto Catch Phrase, which we play as a group trying to guess as many phrases as possible before the timer runs out. We’re much noisier with this game as we shriek with laughter when we have to use outrageous clues in order to get each other to guess the phrases.

Across the table, Mom and I had a connection to communicate phrases easily. Mom had only to say, “When you’re an optimist you see…” for me to call out, “a glass half full.” We were on the same wavelength.

That’s when it hit me. It was the camaraderie of family that made my house home, not the picturesque mountainside Massachusetts setting. November could never cast its dark shadow over the joyful game time or caring conversations that makes my family my home.

Yes, living in the woods and learning from an early age how to split wood safely and effectively has shaped who I am and my understanding of home. I was able to remember that—I spent an hour splitting pine chunks into little kindling pieces. But it was family that provided the comforts of home.

Peeping Tom after a rain Summer 2012
--an ongoing family joke

By baking my favorite cookies for my nuclear and extended family, I was able to give back a little of the comfort and support they had used to build my home community. I molded every cookie into its shape before it went into the oven, letting my hands transmit the unspeakable love for my home and my family.