I love being at home. My wife is a free spirit. She would love to have adventures everyday go here fly there drink up the experiences around her. I attribute that to her artistic side which repels the harsh reality of finances and pragmatism. She attracts me because I would only live in a world of dreary pragmatism. Her life and smile are lifelines that fish me out of the water of despair and hopelessness that I swim in most of the time. She chides me to get out of the house and drink up life. If it was not for her, I would atrophy amidst books and radio programs fit for someone thirty years older. Many times my desire to be home with everyone is not selfish. I am waiting to hear the joyous sounds of my daughters laughing. Their laughter, unhindered and gutteral, floats throughout the house like emotional cotton candy smelling of hope and freedom. It forms clouds above my dry concerns of life and rains down joy and purpose on my desecated mind.  I think I can remember a time when I lived without them but my mind has removed any empty space where their laughter did not fill up dark corners of my heart and mind. Laugh a little today, love someone today, and birth a new hope that did not exist yesterday. AH