Something Creative
As you may know (or not in which case you will soon learn) I have spent the long weekend in Missouri helping my brother-in-law move & clean up the old house. It has been a most bittersweet time as the circumstances for moving are not happy but we always have a good time hanging out. There’s plenty of banter & trash talk but it’s all in fun. As we emptied the house & scrubbed everything it became less of a “home” and more of a “house”. To me home is a sense of place, a building that holds part of me. It shares my identity & personality. A house is just a building, I don’t necessarily feel comfortable in a house…usually I feel stiff like I can’t relax. In my home, my bones become fluid when I sink into my chair or sofa. In a house I’m sitting on the very edge of the seat, anxious about what comes next. As we watched the U-haul fill my brother-in-law’s home became an empty shell of a house, echoing with memories both sweet & poignant.
Packing up & moving has been a huge part of my life. I’ve moved more times than I care to count (15 at least). My first move was so soon after I was born I have no memory of it. We moved into a big white farm house with red trim & a screen door that banged closed when we went chasing in & out. It was one of my favorite places that I’ve ever lived. Maybe because it was my first home…I explored & haunted all the corners of that farm. There were patches of lilies of the valley & violets in the backyard by the grove & the old wooden swing. Moving from that farm made me very sad. I remember crying as we drove away for the last time. I can still remember the telephone number for that house.
From that house we moved back to the town where my parents were raised. We lived in a small house, filling it to the seams & yet we were happy there. Then we moved to a farm where Dad could milk the cows in a big white barn with the most amazing hayloft. We had two mobile homes attached with a breezeway. This meant I got my own room which was a huge deal. I remember hiding in the hayloft with a book & snuggling the baby kitties. I’d take a book (or 3) & find a quiet corner where I could stretch out & read. Sometimes it would be raining & I’d pause in the reading to just lie there & look out at the farm through the crisp clean smell of rain on summer grass.
After awhile we moved into another big farm house…this one had a mile long driveway (no kids this is not an exaggeration) that we had to walk (more often we ran) to catch the school bus. There were days where this wasn’t an altogether unpleasant experience…then there were the subzero winter days where the wind screamed across the prairie. Our bus driver was often very nice & would drive up halfway so that we could get out in the windbreak of the grove. Sometimes we’d just walk in the deep ditches for protection…we’d race & slide on the ice. We lived there until a tornado changed everything & we moved again…
The last move I made with my whole family we moved into the house my parent’s now occupy. It feels like home in many ways although I didn’t live there very long. We moved in the October of my senior year of high school. After that all my moving was from college dorm to places sundry. Until we had our first place together, I didn’t feel like I was “home” for a long time…my apartment with Abe quickly became a home. It didn’t feel like I was waiting to pack up my stuff & move again. We did eventually move…to a little house near where we currently live. That house was just a house…we never felt “lived in” there. This current place is somewhere in the middle…it has been “home” for a few years now but that feeling is leaving me. I’m curious to see where/when I start the hunt.
So what about you? Where have you lived that was truly home? Please share some stories in the comments…I would love to know what makes your place of abode your home.
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http://littledailyescape.blogspot.com Megan
