Our home was an unpainted farmhouse. Its gray clapboards etched a sharp contrast to the bluer than blue Michigan sky. It would never be featured in House Beautiful, but it was our home.

Like a heartbeat, its walls wrapped us with a sense of comfort. My brothers and I crossed the sagging porch and clattered into the friendly kitchen. The aromas of freshly-baked bread, cinnamon-laced apple pies, and robust molasses swimming in the baked beans welcomed us. It seemed to us that Mom worked culinary miracles on her jet-black wood stove.

When I close my eyes I can still see the droplets of sweat on Mom’s brow as she bent to stoke the stove with wood that spilled from the wood box. Her blonde braids shimmered in the dim evening light. Her hands were dusted with flour. Her faded house dress and bib apron were rumpled from the heavy labor of her long day.

I can still hear her gentle voice ordering us, her noisy brood, back outside to wash our hands in the cold water that splashed from the pump in the well house. I can still see the love in her eyes as she watched her family clamber into chairs around our big kitchen table.

Maybe it wasn’t our home’s heartbeat that comforted us? Maybe it was Mom’s?