A Love Letter to My Home

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.

Robert Frost

I love the fierce, unyielding deserts of my Nevada birth.

I love traveling from state to state without a guard at every border crossing.

I love the Navajo tacos and spicy chili relleños of my Albuquerque childhood.

I love Jacksonville, where–with two dozen teens–, I held the edge of an enormous net and walked into the sea, scooping up whatever life came swimming by, then built a bonfire on the beach and roasted up a feast which not restaurant in the nation could ever hope to match.

I love the ragged peaks of the Rocky Mountains and the red rock canyons of my Utah home.

I love state fairs in California, and the King Sequoias rising from its northern shores.

I love the green forests of Minnesota against the striking blue of its ten thousand lakes; I love the shores of Padre Island, too.

I love ice cream in a dish or on a cone from walk-up windows on the beach in Ocean City.

I love public school in an old brick building in Detroit–seven stories tall and smudged with city soot–and classrooms in Las Vegas with doors which open to the sun.

I love the ordinary folks in every tiny hamlet who pay a fee, sign their names, and run for mayor or the sewer board.

I love my children finding useful work, so they can feed their own when that time comes.

I love to worship–from Salt Lake to Glen Burnie, from Sacramento to D. C.–alongside faith-filled congregations, whatever definition of Heaven they may see.

I love walking through the blood-drenched footsteps of Gettysburg and standing in the soaring spray of geysers on the paths of Yellowstone.

I love my Dearborn neighbors who spoke a dozen different languages and shared their overflowing dinner tables with specialties from lands where I will never be.

I love lazy afternoons on broad green lawns that were my college days in Provo, one moment deep in discussion of philosophy or science, the next in raucous, unexpected laughter with the joyous freedom of our unencumbered youth.

I love Little League sports and community choirs.

I love voting every year to be sure my voice is heard.

I  love citizens in uniforms who choose to make the safety of my nation and my community their life’s work.

I love hospitals whose emergency rooms are sanctuaries for babies who might otherwise be lost.

I love an August day swimming in Lake Superior and wondering if my frozen toes would ever come back to life.

I love my brother’s grave on the hillside in cemetery in Palmyra.

 I love the truck stop in Omaha which sells silly, slightly raunchy cards and stale hot dogs as truckers gas and go to keep the endless line of products for our hungry nation moving north to south and sea to sea.

I love libraries with reading rooms for kids.

I love a freeway toll booth in Maryland where my friends and I paid tolls for cars behind us, then waved as drivers passed and honked a ‘thank you’.

I love the dusty roads of reservations in New Mexico, and winding country lanes of Montana’s farming towns.

I love the cozy fires of home on winter nights surrounded by my family of the blood and of the heart.

I love the raising of the flag on Independence Day and the fireworks which light the night.

And America, I Love You.

Happy Birthday