Home

For the first thirteen years of my life I lived in the same house. My mother kept it and all of it's headaches after she and my father divorced. I loved every square inch of that house. When I was thirteen my step-father's last surviving parent died, leaving her house unoccupied, so my mother and her husband saw fit to move into the newly uninhabited abode.

That house was where I lived until I was 19 and left the nest. It never felt like home to me. I remember coming to that realization when I was about 16 years of age. From the time we moved in until the time I moved out, I felt like I was living in someone else's home. Of course, it didn't help that we acquired all of his parent's furniture, antiques, drapes, and dishes, as we couldn't afford to replace everything and his parent's belongings were nicer than anything we owned prior. So, I guess, in essence, we were living in someone else's home; filled with their decorations, their tastes, and their memories. It was a house filled with ghosts. It still is, but that's another post all together.

Tonight, as I was baking Christmas cookies while 2x4 and the kids were reading books in the next room, I shut off the hall light and suddenly found myself overflowing with a sense of being home. It's not a house, it's not as big as we'd like it to be, and I can't afford to decorate the way I would like; but it's our home, and I can't think of anything more comfortable or appealing than that simple feeling.