Article July 24, 2006 Issue

Always at home

BY MICHELLE BOCCANFUSO NANOUCHE

Home has always been important to me. When I was growing up fourth in a vibrant family of five children in a small Virginia town, home was a white house with green shutters, a drainage ditch where stray kittens frequently played, and pink dogwood trees. Later, when I was one of only two teenagers left in the house, home was a quiet place in an Arizona desert oasis.

It wasn't until I was first on my own that home became an arena for self-expression and for the opportunity to extend hospitality. After we married, my husband and I called several places home. Each was centered on nurturing our daughter and an extended stepfamily—and each had trees that bloomed pink in the spring.

Then, change came into my life with early widowhood. I found a lovely condo, adapted to my need to manage financial and household affairs alone. It didn't surprise me to find that it, too, had a pink, blooming tree. It was a gentle reminder that the changes in my life didn't have to mean a loss of the good, but that these changes were simply new opportunities to be conscious of God's ideas taking shape in my life.

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