like blankets

It hits me when I'm in my room alone, listening to them run up and down the one hallway in our little house, grabbing what they need from a treasure box in the bedroom or digging a car out from the shelf in the closet. What will they remember about these years? What little snapshots burn into their brains, and how much bigger will this little house feel to them in their memories?

I love how safe they feel. It should be that way for children, feeling safe and secure and belonging somewhere. My memories of the comfort of my childhood home - how solidly it was mine, how much of a place I had there - are so real they feel touchable, and I think about that when I hear them work their way through our house, knowing just where their things have been stashed, knowing where things go and how they work and where to find their brother or mother or father or their dog or chickens.

We were camping last weekend, an annual Father's Day tradition for us, and we sat around the fire telling the boys stories about when they were littler. They were thrilled to be up late, in the dark, talking around the fire pit together. We told story after story - some just little snippets and glimpses - and their eyes would flicker with recognition and they'd croon, "Yeaaaaah.... I remember that!"

"Let's keep talking about remembers," he said, perched upright and eager in his mini-camping chair.

Those stories wrapped them up like blankets, layers of comfort and security and belonging. Who doesn't relish discovering who they are and where they've been, learning how the people we love the most see us through the stories they remember and tell, feeling just how much we belong to and with the people who make up the stuff of which our stories are made.

:::

- just write