Home
I just got home from...well...home. There's one place in the world where I have felt truly and completely at home and it's odd since I really only lived there for one year before going off to college.
When my mom and step-dad got married and decided she'd move into to city rather than him moving out to the country I was pretty upset to be leaving the comfort zone of my childhood. That happened when I was 12 years old, but my step-dad's house was only one bedroom so we had to rent a house while his was demolished and a new one built that was big enough for the whole family.
He really wanted it to be a dream house, not just for himself but for us as well. He designed most of it himself and we all helped with the demolition and construction. He put in a dark room where he taught me to develop my own pictures. He and my mother and I helped salvage a lot of the hardwood floors in his old house for use in the new house. He taught me about wiring and he and I helped string the wiring in the new house together. I picked out the carpet (burgundy to go with the forest green I picked out for my bedroom wall color). I picked out everything from the tile, to the fixtures, to the shower curtain for, what I still think of as, my bathroom.
After all the design, and demolition, and construction, we finally moved into our dream house just days before I started my senior year in high school. I lived there for one year and then came back for two summers during college before moving to my own apartment. Even though I only lived there for a short time, it was home to me in a way no other house I'd lived in had been. I've lived in my current apartment for almost five years, much longer than I lived anywhere else (besides my childhood home), but it's still just my apartment while my mom's house is still my home. Tonight, sitting in the window seat in my favorite room in the house (the library), I wondered if I will ever think of anywhere else as home.
When my mom and step-dad got married and decided she'd move into to city rather than him moving out to the country I was pretty upset to be leaving the comfort zone of my childhood. That happened when I was 12 years old, but my step-dad's house was only one bedroom so we had to rent a house while his was demolished and a new one built that was big enough for the whole family.
He really wanted it to be a dream house, not just for himself but for us as well. He designed most of it himself and we all helped with the demolition and construction. He put in a dark room where he taught me to develop my own pictures. He and my mother and I helped salvage a lot of the hardwood floors in his old house for use in the new house. He taught me about wiring and he and I helped string the wiring in the new house together. I picked out the carpet (burgundy to go with the forest green I picked out for my bedroom wall color). I picked out everything from the tile, to the fixtures, to the shower curtain for, what I still think of as, my bathroom.
After all the design, and demolition, and construction, we finally moved into our dream house just days before I started my senior year in high school. I lived there for one year and then came back for two summers during college before moving to my own apartment. Even though I only lived there for a short time, it was home to me in a way no other house I'd lived in had been. I've lived in my current apartment for almost five years, much longer than I lived anywhere else (besides my childhood home), but it's still just my apartment while my mom's house is still my home. Tonight, sitting in the window seat in my favorite room in the house (the library), I wondered if I will ever think of anywhere else as home.
posted by Beth at
11:32 PM
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