Hearts and home. . .

A house is not a home. . .
Or is it?

The question keeps running through my mind.

Especially as Valentine’s arrives, and we’re in the throes of purging.

Nope, not a therapeutic cleanse, but cleaning out the house, the overloaded shelves, the overstuffed drawers, the cramped closets, the boxes towering in the garage, filled with, well, who knows what.
Stuff.

Remnants of our kids growing up, the matzah covers and kiddish cups from preschool, the lovingly crafted clay hearts from kindergarten, the hand woven frame holding a mom and daughter photo from the Brownie camping trip.
Memories.

The cartons filled with things we could not bear to part with, or heaven forbid, give away, my mother’s tzedakah box, the Haggadah my dad used to lead the Seder, the beautiful Israeli kiddish cup we gave to my in laws on their 60th anniversary, with Lecha Dodi in swirling Hebrew script.
Treasures.

Even the kitchen utensils from my mother-in-law’s kitchen, a sturdy hard boiled egg slicer, a heavy ice cream scoop, a steel grater, are stashed in a pantry drawer. The file box of handwritten recipes from my older sister resides in another. I thumb through marveling at how her handwriting as a young bride looks like mine. And the bread machine my mother gave me one year for Mother’s Day, in the box on a shelf.
I smile whenever I glimpse it, but rarely take it out.

Maybe stuff to pass on to my kids, or maybe stuff to just pass on. Someone somewhere could really could use a slicer or scoop or a recipe for duck a la orange.
Things.

And that’s not to mention the dozens or more cartons filled with family photos, reports cards, spelling bee awards, letters from camp and post cards from travels around the word. And then there’s the shopping bags crammed with birth announcements, bar and bat mitzvah reply cards, wedding congratulations and condolence letters remembering our late parents.
Paper.

It’s been a journey down memory lane, of more than 50 years of marriage, of near sixty years of Valentine’s Days with my one and only, of the joys of marriage and family and the opportunity to watch our children bloom and grow, to make their own lives and make their own way in the world. To create new memories, their own.

And, that, of course, is the treasure.

It’s not the house, not the things we’ve accumulated, nor the sentimental memories that count.

Even as we reminisce about all the happy occasions celebrated here, of the seders and birthdays and anniversaries, it is still just a house, a shelter, a place to gather together.

But more than that, it’s the home we built together with love, with commitment, with the blessing of children and grandchildren, of friends and extended family.

And the home that resides, no matter where we are, in our hearts.

Forever.

So on Valentine’s Day I am so very grateful for it all, even the stuff and the things yet to unpack.

And my heart is full.