I've always been a bit envious of people who are able to go back and visit the home where they grew up. We moved several times while I was growing up, and when my parents later divorced and remarried, they purchased their own homes. While lovely, they aren't "mine" and I confess that while I'm always comfortable and relaxed, I never feel fully at home while I'm visiting them. Part of what makes a home a home are the memories made within its walls.
My grandparents are moving in a couple of weeks. They have lived there for forty years, so it's the only home that I've ever known them to be in. They are so excited to be moving, and I couldn't be happier for them, but spending the day at their home yesterday hit me with a wall of emotion that I didn't anticipate at all. I cried driving home. It was through the unexpected tears that I realized that home has been the constant in my life. In a world that is ever-changing, that never did. As a child, I remember passing a building with a horse statue mounted on top when we went to visit my grandparents. The statue is still there, and yesterday as I drove that familiar road, I looked for it, as I have for the last twenty years, maybe longer. I spent many days as a child roaming the neighborhood with my brother, and an aunt close in age. We swam in blow up pools in the backyard, and visited neighbors, and collected treasures from the alley in the back. We explored the upstairs, and the basement. We ate many, many meals around the familiar dining room table, and we watched many movies from the living room. I watched my grandmother prune roses, and we had many conversations on the great big front porch. It was on my way to that house that I learned to drive on the interstate, and it was in those walls that I will always remember the loud, happy laughter that was the constant background noise.
What's so marvelous about the house is that it hasn't changed. In a world inundated with the need for shiny and new and expensive, I've always been welcomed with the beat up hardwood floors, and the tiles peeling up in the dining room. The staircase is stained and scuffed up, as it always has been. The paint isn't fresh in much of the house, white molding is stained yellow, and the rooms upstairs that haven't been used for many, many years are still plastered with the same floral wallpaper that adorned the walls when my mother was a little girl. Those sights are familiar though; those sights are home.
Yesterday I took pictures of the house. I wanted to remember it in all of its imperfect perfection.
In eighteen days, my grandparents will say goodbye to their home, and move into a new home. It doesn't need any work at all, and it's beautiful by anyone's standards. But for me, this beat up, old house in need of many repairs will always be my favorite.
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