What Is Home?
What makes a house become a home? What turns the walls and the roof into the place of comfort that makes you always want to come back to the same place?
These are a few of the things I have been trying to explain to my children lately.
You see – I’m a country girl. I was raised in the country and I’m never more content than when I can look out my windows and see nature, not asphalt and houses. I have always wanted that for my children too but so far it has elluded us.
To fall asleep at night listening to crickets chirping and frogs croaking and maybe the occasional coyote rather than traffic, sirens and people. I’d move tomorrow if this became an option.
My kids have never moved. They’ve only ever known this structure we live in now to be “home” and to them, anything else could not ever be “home”. When we talk about moving several of them literally panic and start crying!
The Listmaker
I’m a listmaker. Are you?
Yesterday I made 2 lists with each of my kids. First what things they loved about our current home and yard. Next, what we could potentially have in a “new” home. They were surprised to find their lists for a new home were much longer and more exciting than their lists for the current home.
The hard part is then finding the right place. We have actually been looking on our own for close to 5 years and so far have not found anything that was close enough to what we want to even bother scheduling a viewing. Now we have been working with a Realtor for more than 6 months and still nothing.
Trying to keep a decent pricepoint in mind while finding a house that will accomodate 5 children and has a decent piece of property is next to impossible around the area I live. The prices are high and when something does come along that could work it gets snapped up within hours or days. The ones that sit around, sit around for a reason.
And so it was that I fell in love with, and lost, the perfect property all in 2 days. The part that hurts the most is that when my kids (you know the ones who cry when I bring up the conversation of EVER moving?) ran around on this beautiful acreage, looked out of the windows of the 115 year old farmhouse at farmland and mountains, and breathed in the fresh clean air – they got more excited than I’ve ever seen them about anything resembling brick and mortar and asked when we could move out there.
I haven’t had the heart to tell them yet that its already gone. That it was being sold as we were out there walking around and falling in love with it. I will gather my courage soon. And then I will probably have to watch my children cry again.
Our Answer To The Question
For my kids we discovered it was things that made a house feel like home. They realized that having their much loved furniture and toys and their puppies would make any house feel like home again. And also so long as we could paint one little boy’s room in the exact shade of blue that he has now. THEN and only then, it would be home.
I’m not sure of exactly every single thing that makes a house feel like home to me but I do know the most important thing – having my family around me. So long as I can pack up my children and see smiles on their faces when they run around in beautiful abandon and hearing their happy little voices – then I will be home.
Looking around at familiar pieces of furniture and treasures helps but I can make any house into a beautiful space. With or without those things. I can’t make it home without my children though. And my constant companion, Hope. She is laying at my feet as I write this even now.
And I need beautiful flowers too. Yellow roses in memory of my sister. And I need space to breathe.
What things do you need to feel like you are home? I’d love to hear from you….
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