"Home"

Elsa lazily sucks her bottle of warm milk, drifting into her nap, her head lolling against my chest as we sit on the couch on this rainy January afternoon.  Her fingers twirl slowly through my hair until they finally stop and curl up, her breathing loud and steady, mine long and relaxed.  My "work" is generally done in this room, but there are usually three more occupying it.  They're off at school for now, soon to be gathered with their heaping, paper-painting filled backpacks and their wet winter jackets.  The quiet room will soon be filled with shouts and dance moves and lego battleships.  For now, it's just me, Elsa, and the sagging Christmas tree.  Strings and haphazard lights hang from its long branches.  The paper chains we made for it weeks ago look squished and forlorn.  Blue lights crumple around its base and one or two still unopened gifts have been abandoned on the floor.  Behind the tree, two windows stand watch of the damp street below, one with olive green curtains and one with teal.  An enormous antique globe waits in the corner to be spun by sticky fingers.  A blue and white porcelain lamp braces itself to be knocked over by a nerf ball.  A box full of dinosaurs with their legs tangled with the legs of naked barbies sits on the worn hardwood floor.  Four guitars stand alert, some with all of their strings, some missing one or two.  Two large Barack Obama stickers are slapped on an otherwise empty white wall, and an Etch-a-Sketch with an "I love you" written on it lays next to a stuffed panda bear on the rug.  A stringless upside down banjo hangs from the wall above the rarely used TV, and a taxidermed frog hangs next to it. A bookshelf-which I pluck from sometimes while Elsa sleeps, stands tall, from floor to ceiling, proud of it's contents: Ecotopia, India:A History, American Photography, Crimes of War, Tropic of Cancer, Iraq: the Space Between... along with Cat in the Hat and Where the Wild Things Are.  All of the shelves are filled to the brim.  All but one at the very top, where a number of oblong, dusty, earth-colored vases sit with their secret origins held inside of them.  With no backyard and the cold air blowing outside, this is where the children spend their evenings, wrestling and reading, laughing and growing up.  They, and I, will always remember it.