We take things to remind us of home. I think my favourite is a

In the hush between earth and stars, the voyager Sunita Williams offers a simple, hearth-warm truth: “We take things to remind us of home. I think my favourite is a stuffed dog that was homemade from a picture of my little Jack Russell terrier.” Hear the music under the words: a human heart packing light for a long journey, choosing not gold, not grandeur, but a small emissary of belonging. The ancients would have called such an object a household guardian, a lares in cloth—something humble enough to fit in a pocket, strong enough to carry a world.

To dwell above the earth is to feel the tug of two gravities: the planet’s pull and the memory’s pull. The first binds the body; the second binds the soul. In the capsule’s narrowness, every item competes with mass and mission, yet the voyager makes room for a token—the stuffed dog, stitched by loving hands from a picture—because the journey is not only through space but through solitude. Such a token is a bridge: on one shore the hum of machines, on the other the bark of a small companion in a sunlit kitchen. The bridge is small, but it holds.

Mark the wisdom in the choosing. A homemade object remembers the maker; a likeness remembers the beloved. Together they knit a net against the cold. The Jack Russell terrier—lively, insistent, faithful—becomes emblem and anchor. For when the eyes rest upon its sewn muzzle, a thousand invisible cords pull taut: the smell of grass, the sound of keys at the door, the thrum of a neighborhood at dusk. The token is not magic; it is memory with a body. And memory, given a body, can keep a keeper brave.

This practice is as old as departure itself. Sailors once tucked lockets under their shirts; pilgrims stitched relics into their cloaks; soldiers pressed letters to their chests on the march. Even in the lore of flight, crews carry small talismans—a charm from a child, a ribbon from a wedding, a toy that floats when weightlessness dawns. These are not superstition so much as liturgy: the rite of carrying the hearth’s ember into the wilderness, so that when the night grows long, a flame can be coaxed back to life with a breath and a glance.

Consider a story: an explorer on a months-long polar trek kept, in his breast pocket, a crumpled drawing made by his daughter—two stick figures and a dog, labeled in a beginner’s hand. In storms, he would unfold it in the tent’s thin light. Nothing in the drawing was accurate: not the colors, not the scale, not the sky. Yet everything essential was present: the names, the clasped hands, the animal between them. That paper, worth nothing to the world, was a thousand miles of strength to one man. So too, for an astronaut, a stuffed dog made from a picture holds a tether that no cable can replicate.

From this we draw a clean lesson: the human spirit travels best when it travels with its household gods—those modest symbols that name who we are and for whom we labor. The cosmos is vast, the cockpit cramped, the schedule merciless; still, there must be room for favourite tokens. They sanctify the work by wedding it to love. Without them, achievement risks becoming a sterile constellation; with them, achievement becomes a path home.

Practical counsel for all travelers, whether across oceans, cities, or seasons: (1) Choose one home-bearing token—homemade if possible—small enough to carry, strong enough to speak. (2) Bind it to a daily ritual: a glance before commencing, a touch when doubt rises, a thanks at day’s end. (3) Let it represent not status but relationship—someone who would rejoice at your return, even if you brought back nothing but yourself. (4) Keep a record—a picture, a note—so the token’s story does not thin with time. (5) When you arrive where you are going, place the token in the light, and remember why you came.

So we receive Sunita Williams’s testimony as a map with a single, bright icon: carry home within reach. For though rockets roar and horizons recede, the heart remains an animal that curls where it is known. Give it a sign it recognizes—a stuffed dog, a bracelet, a folded letter—and the heart will lend you its fearless pace. Then your work, however far it ranges, will not estrange you; it will circle back like a loyal hound, and the threshold will greet you with a joy you never left behind.