 |
| The view from our deck- my favorite. |
We leave pieces of ourselves places. Places we live, places we love, places we laugh, places we cry. We associate things with these places- smells, a song, a word or phrase. We dig our our roots in, invest our time and energy and hearts. We make memories, reminders etched in to our very being.
And oh, do we have memories. We lived in that house for almost 20 years- so much laughter, joy, and promise, and a lot of heartbreak, tears, and sadness too. I will never forget sitting around that rickety black table eating grilled salmon drinking a beer, laughing and chattering away with my family. My sisters and I flying up the driveway, sliding out and gravel spraying everywhere. Playing soccer in the backyard, especially the time my uncle broke his ankle playing soccer at my sisters graduation party. Riding up and down that silly hill more times than I care to count and playing Indians in the creek with my sisters, galloping around on my pony 'hunting buffalo' or sledding down the hill only to land in the creek. Putting up the Christmas tree, my sisters and I talking my mom in to keeping it up way longer than she wanted (cough cough...until waaaay after New Years) and the twinkle lights in the Charlie Brown tree. Easter egg hunts where my dad would hide the eggs so well that he didn't really remember where all of them were, and we would end up finding (ahem...smelling) them around August. My mom and Nana sitting in the library drinking coffee and snuggling up to them as they knitted, and my daddy in the den playing his guitar.
Our home was warm and inviting and cozy. My mama seriously could have had a career in interior designing- it was beautiful. We always had more than the five members of my family there, always people and dogs and cats coming in and out. We had an open door policy- anyone was welcome in our home, and everyone knew it. An open door policy was the best thing ever, in my opinion. We always had friends around the kitchen island, munching on whatever snacks we could find, chatting and visiting. On more than one occasion, we had been dubbed the "home for wayward children", hosting friends and friends of friends for meals, holidays, and just a place to crash. A handful of friends that felt comfortable enough would just walk right in through the garage, no knocking, at all hours of the day or night (I'm really not kidding- ALL hours) and plop down on the sofa and watch TV or just hang out. We always knew that if someone knocked on the front door they were either new or a stranger. That was the best kind of home.
I left a huge piece of me in our little home in Waterford, with its wrap around porch and back deck with the twinkle lights in the tree and the view that will literally take your breath away. And it is sad and a little heartbreaking that when I return from this place, it wont be home anymore, at least not to me. It will be home to another family, where they will love it and make their own memories there.
But I'm realizing, as I've been in Uganda away from my home for the first time, that home isn't necessarily a place. A place called home has been so many things to me- when I'm in Kampala or traveling in Uganda, Gulu is home. When I'm in the States, Waterford is home. Harrisonburg is home too, where I went to college. And so is Seattle, ironically enough, even though I haven't lived there. We associate seasons of our lives with places we've been and stayed, but I've understood now that it's so much more.
Home is defined in the dictionary as: home (n): the place where one lives permanently, especially as a family. But I don't live permanently anywhere physical, and I think few people should. There's way too much to see in this one, tiny, wisp of a life we have. But I do live in my family, in my sisters and my mama and daddy and my grandparents. I live in my best friend and I live in the fact that God loves me more than I can imagine. I live in friends I've made and lost and people I've loved. And despite the fact that it's hard to remember sometimes, and sometimes we get stuck in a static idea of what "home" is, home is people who love you and cherish you. Home is a soft place to land, a place where you feel comfortable, loved, and accepted. Home is family. Home is hope.
