Brioche in the oven on a rainy winter day. Children play contentedly with Legos at the table: robots, space adventures, princesses, prisons… Their imagination knows no bounds.

I breakfasted on a leftover cabbage streusel, handmade on Thursday night when there were no groceries in the house. Just some cabbage, flour, and love. I marvel at the little infusions of creativity that turn humble ingredients into a feast. This is the definition of home-making: making a home of the simple daily things.

Simplicity and complexity. Making a home. Making a *home*. A massive endeavor. And the oldest art known to womankind.

It’s a loaf of bread in the oven. Cookies in the pantry. A good book and a porch to read it on. Even if that porch is furnished with secondhand wicker. Better, perhaps, that way than with something new-smelling.

Laughter in bedrooms after the lights turn out. Rustling under blankets on a chilly winter evening. Christmas decorations made of string and paper. Cranberries. Pumpkins. The blur of harvest fading into the rich pantry stores. Golden leaves yielding their autumn coats. Forests giving way to the reign of royal emerald pines.

Today, I began to read The Iliad. Always, I am searching for deeper beauty. Longing for a connection to ages past. Antiquity scares the uninitiated. Old souls rove for ancient roots. Our faith. Our literary past. Dead languages. These anchors moor us to a humanity beyond our limited scope. Without them, we’re dandelion seeds, blown to the wind with no definite place to land.

My quest for beauty combines, inexplicably, with a greater creative awakening. Curiosity and creativity. Somehow, the two are united. Somehow, they draw me deeper into myself and deeper into the footsteps of those before me. Mothers making bread studded with spices and wild yeast. Wives preparing Christmas secrets for their beloved husbands.

So many have gone before. They are the unsung torchbearers for those of us who emerge from our dark caves, lit only by the glow of an electric screen. They are the ones whose homes cultivated the hearts of heroes and the souls of saints, as well as young women who would create their own places for raising the next generation. Always creating. Always instilling beauty and love into the things that they touch. I would like to be one of these women.