This old back porch:

Always ten hours away, always my home.

Years passed like lengthening footsteps beneath armfuls of wedding flowers, or the old ice-cream churn, or memorial programmes. As I grew tall, this place never shrank too small. Its scent was embedded into every memory, as if my mother and aunt and uncles had carved themselves in beside their names.

Those years passed – eras and lives, too – each with a pang of knowing I might never smell that scent again.

And yet, today my own family breathed in the heritage of this porch together one more time.

Were we never able to return, it would hurt. But most likely, it would be due to the simple passing of time.

During our drive home, we listened to a podcast about a famous sandwich shop in Aleppo, Syria. About the flavour of it, and a man who remembers it well, but who can never go back: for the crime of helping wounded protestors at his hospital, he has been targeted by his own government and forced to flee.

What scent or flavour do you cherish?

Who are the people who make home to you?

Please, today, do what you can to help make a home for someone who needs it.