Essay Contest Winner: A Distant Mirror by Frann Anderson Social worker Frann Anderson has been a supporter of Habitat for Humanity since the late '80s, but it was only this spring that she finally got a chance to help build a home. For years, health considerations kept her volunteerism to a support role, but the Philadelphia native and long-time resident of Wilmington, Del., finally found herself ready to contribute in a hands-on fashion as Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County launched a new building project. Anderson calls the chance to travel to India for Jimmy Carter Work Project 2006 a dream come true. "I'd love to meet President Carter," she says. "But to have the opportunity to make something that will last after we leave, that's what I'm looking forward to." My father walks with an unsteady gait. Even with the assistance of a walker, he shuffles precariously and, from time to time, he falls. His memory for recent events slipped away quietly over the past several years. He is never really sure of where he is even though he has lived in the same place for more than a year. He is always surprised to learn that he has a bedroom at my home. Several times a week he is surprised to learn that I am his daughter. "No one ever told me!" He never remembers that my family purchased our home in order to have him live with us. He isn't able to understand how a person could own such a large, beautiful house. It is so large that he often believes he is living in a nursing home. Yet, no matter how beautiful he discovers my home to be, day after day he is still homesick. His memory for recent events slipped away quietly over the past several years, but his memory for the distance past is as vivid as ever. "I'm getting homesick," he told me yesterday. "Homesick? Dad, this is your home." "You always say that! I mean homesick for my house!" At first I thought he meant the house he raised his family in - the home he shared with my mother before she died. But then he began to talk about the "cozy" house on Wellington Street in Philadelphia. The house he grew up in. The house where his mother raised her "three boys." His "home." Yes, his memories of the distant past are so vivid that he is able to fill himself with a memory of a house that was "cozy," safe and full of his mother's love some 62 years later. It is my Dad's memories of his home that compel me to be a Habitat volunteer. The place he wanders back to in his memory as a place of safe retreat. I believe that everyone should have the experience of living in a house that transcends the obvious function of providing shelter. A house provides the structure for families to build "homes." Homes that swell with the smells of a mother's cooking after a long day of work or play. Homes that dance with laughter as families gather together. Homes that embrace a family during troubling times when everyone needs a place to come together to find comfort. Homes brimming with warm, cozy memories. Places that will set the stage for the memories that will later soothe aging and deteriorating minds and bodies as life draws its last bits of energy from them. Habitat is more than a contractor on a construction site. Habitat provides the means for families to make houses into homes. That is why I chose to be a Habitat volunteer.