Home

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” – Robert Frost

We lost Archie for a little while the other night.

Archie is our Miniature Schnauzer and, as is too often the case, he had whiled away a long eight hours or so, waiting for us to get home from our mid-week workaday responsibilities. He is patient about the waiting, more than a little enthusiastic about greeting our returns, and always makes it immediately known that he’s rested and ready for a few hours of full-on running, wrestling, and recreation with his “peeps.”

The “peeps,” sad to say, are not always as primed for play. Some nights, when the day has been especially long and taxing, the “few hours” are condensed into a walk around the block, or several intensive spurts of family activity … leaving him to mosey around bored and restless for much of the evening, while we dine, recline, and repine on the vicissitudes of life.

Sometimes, this leads to sulking at his end of the couch; sometimes to the searching out of mischief. He is especially fond of creating his own exercise regimen for us by taking in mouth something he’s not supposed to have and running madly about the house with us in pursuit.

None of that was working for him, though, the other night. The Potts were pooped. My wife had many a student paper left to grade, so I left her to it, fading into the bedroom to watch an old movie. Archie can’t fathom what her piles of paper are about, and has no use for movies that don’t feature heroic animals or action scenarios. He wandered about the house and in and out of the dark back yard.

After a while, my beloved noticed his extended absence. Dogs and small children cannot be trusted with long periods of silence and invisibility. Curiosity roused suspicion. She took a break and went out back to see what he was up to. No sign of him.

She came in and began poking her head into various rooms, opening closed doors, checking under tables and behind furniture. No Archie. Suspicion became concern.

Gradually, she became aware of an odd sound, and – not unlike Archie himself – fell to tracking it, albeit with her nose a little higher off the ground. The noise brought her, at length, to the front door. She opened it to find Archie, sitting respectfully on his haunches, in the dark, on our welcome mat … one paw scratching patiently at the metal security screen.

How long had he been out there? Obviously he’d gotten out the side yard gate, but what after that? Had he been walking the neighborhood? Dodging traffic? Chasing the small rabbits that roam our area? Had he simply gotten tired and come back, or had the responsibilities of his unexpected freedom just been too much to bear for very long?

At any rate, he was welcomed with a great hue and cry and tight hugging and considerable wonder at his ingenuity and homing instincts. Archie’s not normally a big one for hugging, but he seemed quite happy to be embraced that night. His tail wagged like it might fly off.

We tend to forget what a dark, lonely, empty thing the world is. We have our hearth with its light and warmth, a good bed and enough to eat, our books and our music and our streaming favorites. We think of these as our world, but they are only an oasis. A few steps from the door, and the shadows engulf us. The isolation presses in. And we sense how alone we really are.

Heard from a friend this week. The husband of 20 years who walked out on her and their son a few weeks before Christmas has contacted her. He wants to come back.

Another amigo is here from Brazil. His wife of three decades left him, abruptly, for the bright lights and big money and shimmering allure of success. He sold their old house, gave away the dog, handed the keys of his business to a partner, and came north, seeking the refuge of distance.

The pain came with him. Back home, it will be an even sharper agony, amid the familiar scenes they shared and faces they knew together. But I see a longing, even now, in his eyes.

Yet another friend writes from her small town up north. She came back, a few years ago, after many years in another state. The draw of family was too strong. Their acceptance, after years of mistakes and hurt and aching betrayal, made the long-delayed return worthwhile.

Her parents are gone now, and her brothers have their own lives. But these are the streets and the people she knows. Their rhythms and customs and unwritten histories are in her bones, and though she’s moved in more sophisticated societies, and tasted their pleasures … this is where she wants to be.

Home, for all who have wandered – in body or in soul, for a little while, for a lifetime – is a formidable destination. It looms as intimidating as God to a sinner. The persistence that drives prodigals toward the light in memory’s window draws on the desperate hope that what awaits is some measure of joy and welcome … not the cold unspokens of blame and rejection.

There’s an inverse to the poet’s adage. If they don’t take you in – even if you have to go there – then whatever the draw and affections, it isn’t home. For whatever else it is, home is forgiveness.

“You can’t go home again,” Thomas Wolfe so famously warned us. But, of course, you can. All of us can. If we know Who we’re looking for, then we know, in the deepest places, that He will lovingly receive us.

Once, and again, and again.