Friday, May 7, 2010


Growing up in Southern California afforded plenty of opportunity to visit Disneyland. As a young girl, I would sit in the blue plastic boat as it wound its way through the It's a Small World ride, marvelling over the quaint and utterly whimsical, fairylike landscapes. I thought to myself how I would love to live in a place like that!

My children are no stranger to my dreamy, if not imaginative, nature. As we drive through pastoral settings after seventeen years, they still hear me exclaim as if I just got off the boat yesterday, 'Look! We live in Disneyland!' Groans ensue.... Mom - not again!

Every day I look out my window and wonder if I'm dreaming. This is the view from my bathroom. (!) It is the direction I look if I want to incline my heart toward my Swiss friends - for their houses are not far off in the distance. They live out there - in the small world.

Even with all that lush greenness and charm, one fact remains ...

Home is where the heart is. And if you don't believe it, try living in the plastic boat.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I look at such a beautiful village and I think about the lives encased within those walls...are there hurts behind the beauty?

-Father

Allison said...

Sam Walter Foss writes:

Let me live in my house by the side of the road-
It's here the race of men go by.
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish - so am I;
Then why should I sit in the scorner's seat,
Or hurl the cynic's ban?
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.