There’s a place on the right as I approach the traffic light on the way home. The road curves and they’ve added an extra blinking one to let you know, you may need to stop.

To the right, a cluster of homes in not very good shape are tucked in a little valley with pathways that became skinny roads like a maze.

Every year as long as I’ve been here, one of the homes is decorated. Colored lights in a row draped around the porch’s flat roof. I smile as I approach. I sort of hope the light’s red so I can pause. I smile.

The homes are mobile and they’re not double, but single in width. They’re trailer homes, floors made from pressed pieces of wood and the walls likely sections of a sort cork, maybe painted a dull green or a muted yellow or beige that was once white.

How do I know?

My first years of motherhood started in a little used trailer we worked to make a home until we moved up and into a bigger one, a double.

I’m not sure I realized it until just this second, the reason I love to see old wooden houses, mobile homes or places that are in need of a little help and yet, they still inhabit joy and they often share it.

There was joy in that little first home of ours, joy in spite of all the other stuff.

This is why I love these bright little places I notice and why I find them so special.

Colored lights on a wooden porch with cement steps, a Frosty or Rudolph in the flower bed, maybe a star barely hanging on to the roof or my favorite, a curtain left open to invite a peek to see their tree.

Even more beautiful, a trio of candles, their glow yellow from age set on a windowsill on purpose for people like me.

I love to see the old and worn out not being forgotten, but loved nevertheless.

So…if you’re out and about, look for these little “lights in the darkness” instead of the fancy LED battery and timer manipulated displays.

Look for the shiny houses, the ones sharing their imperfect display and sharing it in a most joyful way.