Home

     "Home," Robert Frost once wrote, "is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."
     From his heartbreaking "The Death of the Hired Man," a short story, really, a farm couple sitting on the front porch, talking about Silas, the ne'er-do-well who works for them, sometimes. A refutation to all those who dismiss Frost as a greeting card poet of snowy evenings and yellow woods. (Along with "Out, Out—" a poem about a boy who feeds his hand into a buzz saw — though the saw practically grabs it, after the boy is called to supper, "As if to prove saws knew what supper meant/Leaped out at the boy’s hand, or seemed to leap—"
     Dire things, at cross purpose to my holiday mood. There are of course happier interpretations of "home." It is the place where you walk in, drop your bags, and — even after an absence of seven months and the arrival of big changes —still look into the refrigerator to see what there is good to eat. Even with a freshly baked cranberry bread waiting on the counter. A ritual of familiarity, and comfort. Things change. But at home — another definition — the grinding gears of time is thwarted, for now. The usual home brands in the refrigerator. The old crib he slept in, a gorgeous rich blue, bought in the city at Lazar's, now magically returned from its sojourn with other relatives. Set up in his old bedroom, under the chess trophies, fitted with fresh sheets, ready for a new generation.