A True Homebody.

I like to be on the go, I love to have places to be at and people to see and appointments and deadlines and all that jazz. But I also love knowing that at the end of the day I can come home and slip into pants and a shirt not acceptable in public and just chill. I love that my favorite reality tv shows are on at the same time each week. I love that I can make a cup of tea exactly the way I like it. Even when I lived at college my dorm room was a haven reflecting me on all the walls; a place to entertain others. I cannot imagine not having a place that is mine that I can go home to and close the door on the world.

On Friday I had lunch with a few other moms. One of them is currently displaced. She was working in Lebanon with her husband and two children. They were on a vacation in Spain when the bombings started and were not allowed to go back into Lebanon. They are now back in Canada where she is from, heading to the US where he is from and for the next year they will be living a few months here and a few months there. And they only have what they took with them on vacation. None of their pictures or the stuff of "home" that you look forward to after a vacation. I could not imagine.

And the woman had such grace. Sharing stories of the first time her daughter attended daycare with another woman who is dreading returning to work. Her children still politely asked for what they wanted or needed, even waited to be invited to play with the toys. I think that if I was two years old I would have run in like a kid in a toystore and just started playing with EVERYTHING. When it was offered for her to take some food for their next road trip that day she still declined, not wanting to be a bother. (Fortunately mommy mode kicked in and we made sure they didn't leave without something to tide them over).

The power of women is amazing to me more and more everyday. Men are always crowned as the strong ones, but I am beginning to understand how truly underated the power of women is. It may look like all she had to do was come over for lunch and hang out, but how much personal strength she must have in order for her children to come to a completely strange place and feel safe. To put aside her obvious trials and encourage another. To have nothing and still genuinely turn down necessities because she knows how hard it is to make it these days. I only met her for half an hour, but she sure touched my life forever.