Home away from home.

For at least one of us, Cailliou Home has rather quickly become a home away from home. If you may, I will be bold enough to say for a handful more. But what is HOME in the minds and hearts of children like me?

Home is a place you want to get back to. It is not where the entirety of life unfolds but it is a safe place to return to when the wheat has been harvested, the mountains have been climbed and the dragons have been sleighed. When off along the path of the Hero’s Journey, home is deeply missed. When time comes to make the return it is the misty oasis in the distance that causes you to run when you thought you could not run further. By day it is a memory we carry close to heart. By night it is a dream.

Home is a nest with big and small birds with long and short wings always outstretched to hug in times of joy and in times of grief.

Home is a school, the best of all schools for in its classrooms there seems to be no teaching yet infinite learning. Its rules are of the simplest sorts: fly high, love deep, fail but try again, forgive. Far from the nest, these rules are hard to even hear of, let alone do they have the chance to seep into the hallow marrow they were made for.

At the close of our first week of growing together, all the anxiety that has had me sleepless at night and disperse by day has been squeezed out by the swelling gratitude that has finally oozed into these words. Thank you Jinan, thank you Spotlight, for so quickly becoming my home away from home.