My son and daughter-in-law were sharing their reading of In The Glory of the Morning aloud. They especially liked, he told me, those scenes describing the “Chisholm” home. “That gave us both a sense of peace.”

I appreciated hearing that. Home can mean a lot of things. It’s more than architecture or decor: it is, I believe, a “vibe.” You know it when you feel it.

Home for me, in my young life, was something I took for granted — family, food, an unconscious sensation of security, a place to come back to after sorties out into the wider world.

It was when I was a teen that I suddenly discovered the look of home I wanted to create in a future grownup life. I was sitting on my family’s living-room couch, light streaming through the bay window onto a magazine of Mom’s I was perusing. Fashions, recipes, articles and short stories were colorful in abundant supply.

Then I turned a page and WOW! I saw a rustic kitchen with a fire burning in a brick fireplace, and a wooden table and chairs cozily placed before the hearth. Accoutrements included a bowl of oranges, a tray of unshelled walnuts, two red geraniums and a small sheaf of Indian Corn.

I looked and looked and looked. Some unknown part of me had unfolded, then connected with this beguiling essence the way two pieces of Velcro attach. Satisfaction.

This became for me a template for creating “home” in my future yet to come. And no, I never managed to have a kitchen with a fireplace in it, but I managed to give that look, with antique embellishments, to all future “family rooms.” And for my family, I think this did come to represent the feeling of “home.”