One Saturday Morning

What is home?

The nose knows

Of weekend morning coffee wafting up the stairs

Mom making French toast all for me

My brother, "eggs with yellow in the middle"

Oh, I wish those walls could talk

The arguments of teenage siblings

Of laughing so hard at Friday night television

(Or Saturday morning cartoons)

The popcorn ceilings not too often seen these days

Staring up and creating faces out of the patterns

Let's not forget the terrible old dated linoleum

You can make patterns out of that too!

I go back to smells

Of parties of the 90's, cigarettes and Coors light

Drunken, loud adults mingled with laughing kids

This was the norm

This was our life

Oh if those walls could talk.

That is ancient history

My kids don't know that house

They do know the people though

Grandma and Grandpa now

Spit up on the carpets

And the merry-go-round of food in the middle of the table

"Grandma always has snacks"

The smells have matured as I have matured

The house no longer lingers of stale cigarette smoke

Of boozed up adults having a roarin' good time

Now it's food prep and picky eaters at the holidays

Mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey and ham

Let's not forget the coffee, I enjoy a cup of my own now

It's always the smells

The nose knows home better than anyone.