this house is not a home

i found this delightful to read. the author writes with alot of contagious enthusiasm. when he describes ideas of home it sounds much like a description of mother (not who she is but what she is). as i read it though i long for the house he describes (my own was not the place of saftey he paints). my childhood memories of 'safety', looked at with adult eyes are terrible. i also cant help thinking of those who grew up with hoarders as parents. a friend of mine whos childhood home i visited recently was a cluttered labrithe with some rooms of the house so full that piles reach the ceiling making many rooms unusable. i think about the way they feel about their mothers home and the way i feel about my own; and the line "these dwelling places of the past remain in us for all time" rings true. instead of warming day dreams, for those of us with traumatic childhood homes, there are inescapable night mares that feel as though they are a visible stain the world can see. the author talks about the imapct of these spaces but i wonder what is the impact of spaces that leave no room(emotional and/or physical) for inhabbitants? "the normal unconcious knows how to make itself at home everywhere" which is true. childrens minds will find ways to self-nurture even in painful places. the lack of space forces one to daydream more than most to creat worlds where there is space or they normalize their surroundings only understanding that the space in which they live is not quite like others.