Home is where the heart is

I've been doing some fretting about the subject of home lately.

Marcia and I have decided to downsize in our sunset years, and took the giant leap of purchasing a condo. Working with the bank was very difficult...I'm still not sure why. Now the condo needs a new furnace and new appliances. More money that we don't have. Then will come the painstaking process of emptying our present home, where we have spent the past 45 years and where we reared all of our children.

My fretting stopped yesterday when my friend David called.

David is a wrongly convicted sex offender who served 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Naturally he was anxious to be released, but now he's finding that freedom isn't all that exciting for one who is on a sex offender list. In fact, he's homeless. He finds a low-priced place that might fit into his tiny budget (he lives on disability income), only to learn that the dwelling is near a school. He would be committing a felony if he moved in there. And so he has bumped from pillar to post, sleeping just about anywhere except under a bridge...and maybe he has been there, too.

At the moment he's living in a little camper trailer illegally parked next to a friend's house. The facilities are almost non-existent and it's not the way you or I would care to live. Personal hygiene is a struggle.

He reports that recently his old truck broke down for good, and while he was making arrangements to have it towed the contents of the cab were stolen. This included the computer that we had provided for him.

Life is very discouraging for this former inmate.

And David is stuck in this situation because of prosecutorial misconduct and some other unethical activity in our judicial system. Meanwhile, all those people who created this hell for him can return to their nice homes at the end of the day.

I'm not fretting anymore. I'm feeling blessed, and frankly, a bit guilty. Shame on me for complaining.

Laura Ingalls Wilder is quoted as saying, "Home is the nicest word there is."

Nice, that is, if you have one.

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