Care

Take time to appreciate
those who love you,
or else time will teach you
to treasure their memories.

Thoughts and poems for home and missing:Do They Think of Me at Home? by Martha Lavinia Hoffman***Home by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Music:
OMAR AKRAM - A Day With You

Do They Think of Me at Home?
Martha Lavinia Hoffman

When sunset tints the western skies
With evening's roseate flush,
When the woodlands lie in shadows
In the twilight's deepening hush;
When the shadows lengthen round the
Lowly cot and stately dome,
When the toilsome day is over,
Do they think of me at home?

Do they think of me when morning
Calls from slumber to awake,
When the lark is skimming gaily
O'er the bosom of the lake,
When the meadows lie serenely
'Neath the blue ethereal skies;
And the saucy sprightly bluejay
Wakes the forest with his cries?

Do they think of me and miss me,
In the noontide's glowing heat,
When the cottage echoes gaily
To the tread of little feet;
When the oriole and warbler
Sing their merry roundelay;
Do they think of me and miss me
In the busy, bustling day?

Do they think of me in winter,
When the falling of the rain
Makes a pattering on the shingles,
Trickles down the window-pain;
When the low night-winds are whispering,
Like some far-off mournful lyre,
When they gather in the evening,
'Round a brightly glowing fire?

When the children's merry laughter
Makes the cozy home-nest ring;
Do they think of me, I wonder,
When the evening songs they sing?
What is sweeter than that music,
When their childish voices raise
In their songs of flowers and fancies,
In their songs of prayer and praise.

Oft I sit beside my window,
When the day's long march is o'er,
When the waves are slowly creeping
O'er the distant ocean's shore;
And I wonder as I sit there,
In the twilight, all alone,
Do they pause amid life's bustle
To think of me at home?

Michael Gorban Art

Home
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

The greatest words are always solitaires,
Set singly in one syllable; like birth,
Life, love, hope, peace. I sing the worth
Of that dear word toward which the whole world fares -
I sing of home.

To make a home, we should take all of love
And much of labour, patience, and keen joy;
Then mix the elements of earth's alloy
With finer things drawn from the realms above,
The spirit home.

There should be music, melody and song;
Beauty in every spot; an open door
And generous sharing of the pleasure store
With fellow-pilgrims as they pass along,
Seeking for home.

Make ample room for silent friends--the books,
That give so much and only ask for space.
Nor let Utility crowd out the vase
Which has no use save gracing by its looks
The precious home.

To narrow bounds let mirrors lend their aid
And multiply each gracious touch of art;
And let the casual stranger feel the part -
The great creative part--that love has played
Within the home.

Here bring your best in thought and word and deed,
Your sweetest acts, your highest self-control;
Nor save them for some later hour and goal.
Here is the place, and now the time of need,
Here in your home.

Mark Twain On Home

Daniel Gerhartz Painting

To us, our house was not unsentient matter. It had a heart and a soul and eyes to see us with approvals and solicitudes and deep sympathies. It was of us and we were in its confidence and lived in its grace and in the peace of its benediction. We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome. And we could not enter it unmoved. And could we now, oh how, in spirit we should enter it unshod.

Quotes On family

Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.
Anthony Brandt

Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.
Reinhold Niebuhr

Sisterhood quote by E.M Forster

And the triviality faded from their faces, though it left something behind -- the knowledge that they could never be parted because their love was rooted in common things.
E.M. Forster

On father by Martin Townsend

There is no limit on the number of times your father can come to life. … You may think that love is all that is left of him, but when he comes, he comes with all his winters, and all his wounds. Then, before you can touch him, he’s gone, leaving on your fingers a little more of his weariness, a little more of his love.
Martin Townsend, The Father I Had.

Family quote by henry ward beecher

Fritz Buhler Art

If God has taught us all truth in teaching us to love, then he has given us an interpretation of our whole duty to our households. - We are not bom as the partridge in the wood, or the ostrich of the desert, to be scattered everywhere; but we are to be grouped together, and brooded by love, and reared day by day in that first of churches, the family.
Henry Ward Beecher

Home quote by charles dickens

Sandra Kuck Art

When I speak of home, I speak of the place where in default
of a better--those I love are gathered together; and if
that place where a gypsy's tent, or a barn, I should call
it by the same good name notwithstanding.
Charles Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby

Sister and brother quotes

She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities. She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you anyway. She is your partner in crime,your midnight companion, someone who knows when you are smiling, even in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some days, she's the reason you wish you were an only child.
Barbara Alpert

Like branches on a tree we grow in different directions yet our roots remain as one. Each of our lives will always be a special part of the other.
Unknown

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother.Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.
Anna Quindlan

If thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother.
Epictetus

A sister is a little bit of childhood that can never be lost.
Marion C. Garretty

Perhaps the World Ends Here by BY JOY HARJO

Perhaps the World Ends Here
BY JOY HARJO

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what,
we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on
the table. So it has been since creation, and it will
go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe
at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what
it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts
of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms
around our children. They laugh with us at our poor
falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together
once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in
the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place
to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate
the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared
our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow.
We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while
we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

Paternal Love by Victor Hugo

Paternal Love
Author: Victor Hugo
("Ma fille! o seul bonheur.")
[LE ROI S'AMUSE, Act II]
Translated by FANNY KEMBLE-BUTLER.

My child! oh, only blessing Heaven allows me!
Others have parents, brothers, kinsmen, friends,
A wife, a husband, vassals, followers,
Ancestors, and allies, or many children.
I have but thee, thee only. Some are rich;
Thou art my treasure, thou art all my riches.

And some believe in angels; I believe
In nothing but thy soul. Others have youth,
And woman's love, and pride, and grace, and health;
Others are beautiful; thou art my beauty,
Thou art my home, my country and my kin,
My wife, my mother, sister, friend--my child!
My bliss, my wealth, my worship, and my law,
My Universe! Oh, by all other things
My soul is tortured. If I should ever lose thee--
Horrible thought! I cannot utter it.

Smile, for thy smile is like thy mother's smiling.
She, too, was fair; you have a trick like her,
Of passing oft your hand athwart your brow
As though to clear it. Innocence still loves
A brow unclouded and an azure eye.
To me thou seem'st clothed in a holy halo,
My soul beholds thy soul through thy fair body;
E'en when my eyes are shut, I see thee still;
Thou art my daylight, and sometimes I wish
That Heaven had made me blind that thou might'st be
The sun that lighted up the world for me.

Child and learning gift by Tagore

Steve Hanks painting

The child learns so easily because he has a natural gift,
but adults, because they are tyrants, ignore natural gifts
and say that children must learn through the same process
that they learned by. We insist upon forced mental feeding
and our lessons become a form of torture.
This is one of man ís most cruel and wasteful mistakes.
Rabindranath Tagore

Inspiring family quotes by Richard Bach,Mignon McLaughlin

Art by Pino

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood,
but of respect and joy in each other's life."
Richard Bach

Family quarrels have a total bitterness unmatched by others.
Yet it sometimes happens that they also have a kind of tang,
a pleasantness beneath the unpleasantness, based on the tacit
understanding that this is not for keeps; that any limb you
climb out on will still be there later for you to climb back.
Mignon McLaughlin

MOTHER'S SONGS/Author unknown/inspiring motherhood poem

Art by Fritz Zuber Buhler

MOTHER'S SONGS
Author Unknown

Songs my mother taught me,
In the days long vanish'd
Seldom from her eyelids
Were the teardrops banish'd.
Now I teach my children
Each melodious measure,
Oft the teardrops flowing,
Oft they flow from my mem'ry's treasure.

Family humanize you/.quote by Anais Nin

Art by Steve Hanks


I know why families were created with all their imperfections.
They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself
occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not
destroyed.
Anais Nin

Family quote by Erma Bombeck/

Painting by Pino Daeni

The family. We were a strange little band of characters
trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste,
coveting one another's desserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing
money, locking each other out of our rooms, inflicting pain
and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing,
defending, and trying to figure out the common thread that
bound us all together.
Erma Bombeck

Inspiring Mother quote by Washington Irving

Art by Michael Malm


A father may turn his back on his child; brothers and sisters
may become inveterate enemies; husbands may desert their wives
and wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through
all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world's
condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that
her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she
remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with
rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood,
the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought
to think him all unworthy.
Washington Irving

If By Rudyard Kipling

Art By michael Malm

If
Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

The gift by Li-Young Lee /Father poem

The Gift
Li-Young Lee

To pull the metal splinter from my palm
my father recited a story in a low voice.
I watched his lovely face and not the blade.
Before the story ended, he'd removed
the iron sliver I thought I'd die from.

I can't remember the tale,
but hear his voice still, a well
of dark water, a prayer.
And I recall his hands,
two measures of tenderness
he laid against my face,
the flames of discipline
he raised above my head.

Had you entered that afternoon
you would have thought you saw a man
planting something in a boy's palm,
a silver tear, a tiny flame.
Had you followed that boy
you would have arrived here,
where I bend over my wife's right hand.

Look how I shave her thumbnail down
so carefully she feels no pain.
Watch as I lift the splinter out.
I was seven when my father
took my hand like this,
and I did not hold that shard
between my fingers and think,
Metal that will bury me,
christen it Little Assassin,
Ore Going Deep for My Heart.
And I did not lift up my wound and cry,
Death visited here!
I did what a child does
when he's given something to keep.
I kissed my father.