In Season 6’s episode "Comings and Goings", Sara Stanley reflects on what it feels like to be home in Avonlea (see quote above), after having been away at her other family home in Montreal for a few months.

Not only is “home” a major theme in Road to Avonlea, but it is one of the staples around which Lucy Maud Montgomery, author of the books that inspired the series, based many of her novels.  Finding a home, missing a home, starting a new home, are all elements that she touches upon.  In her own life, Montgomery moved to Ontario when she married her husband, a Presbyterian minister.  Her homesickness for P.E.I., and all the old haunts she loved so much growing up, is a constant source of regret and inspiration.

Though she records in her journal that she is pleased with her new home and takes delight in it, she can’t forget her old home on the island.  “…now I have more leisure and am beginning to realize the delight and comfort of many things that have been long absent from my life—or were never in it.  This doesn’t mean that I do not even yet have agonizing hours of homesickness—hours where nothing seems to me able to make up for the loss of my old beloved haunts and the wild sweetness of solitary dreaming therein.  Such hours come very often when I am alone.  But they are not continuous.  I am contented—I may say happy.  There is an absolute happiness and comparative happiness.  Mine is the latter.”

Here is a poem of Montgomery’s that touches upon these sentiments.

If I Were Home

If I were home on those dear green hills,
In those wide and dewy meadows,
Where the cattle pastured by lake and stream
‘Mid the ever-hurrying shadows;
Could I see once more the farmhouse old
And the drowsy sunlight shining
Through door and casement where, pink with bloom,
The roses are thickly twining,
I know full well that this weary pain
Would leave me and I should be free again
From the fever’s cruel fetter –
If only once more my longing eyes
Might look on the blue of the homeland skies,
I know I should soon grow better.

If but once more I might drink the air
Of the meadows brimmed with clover
And roam at will through the pastures wide
Where rhythmic winds blows over;
Could I but hear in the still of the night
The patter of raindrops falling,
The old-time croon of the poplar trees
Or the cricket’s harvest calling;
Could I see the dawn on those shadowy hills
Flame into the day while across the sills
Its golden light came creeping
Then I know that my weary eyes would close
In the perfect rest of a calm repose
A happy and painless sleeping.

Could I life once more ’neath the orchard boughs
Where I know my bees are humming,
And the whiffs of sweet old-fashioned flowers
Are ever going and coming;
Could I stand at dusk in the darkling lane
And hear the cowbells tinkle,
When the cows come home in the twilight dim
And the stars are all a-twinkle;
Could I wander once more in my woodland nooks
And hear the call of my full-voiced brooks,
How hope in my heart would flutter!
Oh, if I were home in the old-time calm
Of those quiet valleys their breathing balm
Would yield me from suffering a glad release
And fill my heart with a raptured peace
Too deep for tongue to utter.

What do you remember of your own childhood homes?  What impact did your early surroundings have on your life?

Sources: The Poetry of Lucy Maud Montgomery, The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume II: 1910-1921