Be Not Long Away From Home

In the wandering adventures of the Odyssey, there appears this yearning, heartfelt plea: “Be not long away from home.” And Thomas Jefferson wrote this in a letter: “Abstracted from home, I know no happiness in this world.”
Increasingly we are ever and evermore aware that high among the hallowed blessings in the life of a boy or a girl is the blessing of a happy home. And among the most blessed memories that man or woman can carry anywhere are the memories of a happy home. And among the most important privileges of parents is the making of a happy home—a home where children want to be, to which they will want to return: not a place of perfection, not a place of spotlessness, but a place of pleasantness, of helpfulness and hospitality, of some reasonable order and of understanding, of love and loyalty, not marred by the tension of expecting the impossible, nor strained by constant quarreling and contention; a place where mealtime is not for scolding or for finding fault, but for good memories of getting together.
The making of a happy home is not more of things than it is of attitudes: the pleasant departing; the reassuring welcome to a child coming home from school; the kindly greeting when anyone enters; the feeling of belonging, of being wanted; the giving and keeping of confidences.
Home can be a dull and lonely place, or a warm and wonderful place, depending upon who is home, and how understanding are the hearts at home. And one of the greatest compliments that can come to any home is for those who live there to want to bring their friends within its walls: a place where children want to return—a place, wherever they are, and however old they are, they remember with warm and wonderful memories. A century and a half ago or so Hannah More wrote these four fervent lines:

The sober comfort, all the peace with springs
From the large aggregate of little things;
On these small cares of daughter, wife or friend,
The almost sacred joys of home depend.

Parents and children share together the sacred opportunity and obligation to make of home a pleasant place to come to, a place of warmth and welcome, a place to which hearts “turn at eventide,” in memory forever blessed, wherever we wander in the world.