Home

What is it about my wife, Karen, all wrapped snuggly in a lavendar robe watching a special edition of "The Antique Roadshow" that makes home on a Tuesday night the 'it'?

It must be that. Or the way she still gets excited about the women contestants showing their brain power on Jeopardy!

Home is a drug. It's a rush. I feel it as my car gets closer to our street. I get impatient as I wait for the endless string of cars to pass so I can make that left-hand turn into the street that leads up to our cul-de-sac. It becomes real, the anticipation palpable like a third strike from the arm of a baseball reliever, as I click the garage door opener and drive in, slowly, careful not to scrape my sideview mirros on the cement walls.

It is home and it's like, heaven. I'm not kidding. I just don't know why.

It must be the non responses from my two teenaged sons that makes it for me. That seals that warm, I'm home - yeah! feeling every night after work.

"Whad, you need to be acknowledged?" said Andy, 16, looking up at me with just a hint of interest from his AP chemistry homework.

"No. I just want to see you. I missed you last night because I got home late from work," I said.

I wander into the living room and announce a "hi" to my 18-year-old who is ensconced in Guitar Hero III. He smiles, I think, and continues playing a computer version of Pearl Jam.

I can't understand it. Home. It's everyday but it is something fresh every night.

Maybe it's great because it is part of me. They are all part of me. My sons, literally carry part of me with them -- my genes, my upbringing, well mine and that of my wife who is their mother.

Maybe home is so good because it is telling me there is love there. No, I may not always feel it or see it demonstrated in Hollywood moviemaking style, but it is there. I can sense it when I'm a mile away in my car waiting to turn left into our neighborhood of other, tidy homes.

Home is great because it says I'm alive. It says I exist. It is people who know me and accept me. Who can allow me to sing '80s songs by Elvis Costello so badly that they don't care (although Elvis might, I hear he can be quite the perfectionist bitch; that's part of his genius).

Or maybe, just maybe, it is the physical. The warmth in the air that is a lot better to this aging body than the brisk chill outside. Or the chicken caccitorre dinner my wife made from scratch. You haven't lived until you arrive home, fresh from the cold, corporate decisions in an office and the worries of co-workers to smell onions and garlic sizzling from a pan on the stove.

You know what's great about home? It's opening the refirgerator and seeing good things in there. Good, familiar food. It's knowing that that leftover gingerbread loaf is still there, wrapped in Saran Wrap, sitting on the bread box, if you should get hungry later on in the evening.

Home is great because well, it ain't work. It is a cocoon, I'll admit, a snuggly lavendar robe wrapped around me that keeps me forever warm.