Homecoming

We wanted our children to grow up in a kind of extended family, or at least with an abundance of “significant others.” A house full of people; a crowded table ranging across the generations; four-hand music at the piano; nonstop conversation and cooking; baseball games and swimming in the afternoon; long walks after dinner; a poker game or Diplomacy or charades in the evening, all these activities mixing adults and children–that was our idea of a well-ordered household and more specifically of a well-ordered education.

Thus spake Christopher Lasch, an "invocation of moral and cultural virtues and of dozens of humble, bourgeois practices (evening meals, organized sports, family games, etc.)" quoted by Front Porch Republic's Russell Arben Fox — Defending Lasch, Left and/or Right.

God willing, that vision, more or less, may soon be my reality, and in the very same Village of Pittsford that Prof. Lasch's called home, no less. That was the kind of home my wife and I grew up in, more or less, and we naturally want the same for our kids.

My parents informed me today that they sold their home after eight days rather than the eight months they expected. They're not even Catholic, yet (they have suggested they will convert once we are living together), but have chalked up the sale to St. Joseph. (For more on the custom — Burying a St. Joseph Statue and St. Joseph, Real Estate Agent?) In fact, they've received his help before.