Home

I am reading a series of books by Patrick E. Craig.  It's the series of an Amish woman who was in a car wreck when she was four and found by an Amish woman.  And since there was no way to find her parents, if they were still alive, the Amish couple was permitted by the State of Pennsylvania to adopt the little girl.


When the girl became a teenager she wanted to find her birth parents.  The story takes place in the late 1950s.  It is called the coming home series.


What has impressed me is the way the writer has placed his thoughts about HOME in his books.  And it is just the way I feel about Runnemede.


While I only grew up there, my husband and I returned every year to visit mom and dad, and I left not knowing whether any particular visit would be my last visit with them as a couple and as individuals.


Even after they passed away I still tried to get HOME every year.  That has now been reduced to once in a great while (like every five years or so).  While I can still walk the streets nearly the old house and remember this house where Joan lived, and that house where Sue and Donna lived, or the house in which Marilyn lived, it revives those precious memories of friends I had as a girl and brings to my mind how much I miss my friends and especially my home (house) and that attic bedroom with no heat in the winter that I enjoyed in my teen years and early 20s. 


My only regret is that I didn't pump my mom and dad for more information about their early years as a married couple.  How did they meet?  How long after meeting did they know they loved each other?  How did my father handle the death of his mother when he was only 9 years old?  How did my mother handle the death of her father when she was only 8 or 9 years old?  What was the past history of mom's family in Italy, and what was dad's family history in the Amish country in Pennsylvania.  He did mention the Amish family farm he visited many times when he was a boy, but I really wasn't paying much attention.  What ever happened to the Casper bath-house in Seaside Heights when his grandmother and grandfather died?  I vaguely remember dad having to do something legal during that time, and he talked about the "shore" house and business.  Where did it go?  Who bought it? 


I will still go home with so many memories, and like Patrick Craig says in his book (not a quote here) home will always be the place where you grew up and those memories will always be the brightest.


I loved my HOME in Runnemede, NJ.


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