Home, home-home, or home-home-home

We think often about home these days - meaning during the last few decades.

• We have spoken of how to feel at home in new places.
• We have pondered and wondered what all we might need to create a sense of home.
• We chuckled about the cool signs at camping stores that say "Home is where we park it."
• We have definitely rejoiced over the reality of that pithy declaration - that we did indeed discover it to be true in our years of living on the road.
• We have both written about these ideas.

Almost exactly thirty years ago now, we had a fun conversation that summarizes this many-faceted thought process.  My man shared that story here...

  A while after settling in to our new habitation in Santiago,

we noticed that we needed a new way of designating our location

during our conversations with each other.

We were spending the Thanksgiving holiday at a beachfront village

(there was no turkey dinner for us that year),

and we were confusing each other

by referring to the hotel room as Home when returning from the beach –

then the house in Santiago as Home,

and then also making the same reference to our Home in Michigan.

One of our daughters finally solved the problem:

“Home” was our hotel room,

“Home-Home” was our house in Santiago,

and “Home-Home-Home” was our old place in Michigan.  

And that really did help clear up the confusion

when we talked about “Home”

Cardigan Day

A friend just shared a post from a local business who is celebrating Cardigan Day - also officially known as World Kindness Day - celebrating the legacy of Mister Rogers and his efforts to spread kindness in the world.  I was delighted to think that this might really be a thing so I had to Google it.    ...     Sure enough, it turns out to be true.

In Pittsburg where Mister Rogers lived and worked and hosted his famous neighborhood,  WQED has invited locals to wear cardigan sweaters and to come to the station to see his new portrait on display in their building.  At one hospital the babies in the nursery are dressed in adorable little red cardigans for the day.  

There are so many of these “awareness days” that I don’t even try to keep track of them all.  However I did just discover a website about these events and a 2020 calendar so I guess I can if I want to.

I love what the staff at Knights Insurance Agency is doing - not only with wearing cardigans, but in taking extra time and effort to express Mister Rogers’ philosophy to their clients:  

We want you to know that you are special

and we like you just the way you are! 

...

Let’s go out and show some kindness today!

Because you see, the cardigans are cool and fun and adorable and I think Mister Rogers would have approved.  But I think he would have been even happier to think that people are celebrating kindness and searching for ways to show it to their neighbors.