Anywhere
Eight houses and eighteen years. It was eight times that my mom threw my older brother and I in the back of the gold Honda Pilot and said “ready to go to our new home?”. Home. How is it that my family and I recreated home over and over? I can only find one common denominator, one answer to the question “what makes a house a home?”, family. For family was the only similarity between the eight houses we made home.
Lately I wonder, and even complain about, do we all really need a home? A family? I, personally, don’t want a home. I would love to be free, to live untied to anything, to anywhere, and anyone. However, I have realized that we do not always choose home, often it chooses us. Sometimes, it makes you come home on a Wednesday night when you want to hangout with friends. Sometimes, it makes you finish your soggy broccoli before you leave the dinner table. Sometimes, it gives you ginger ale with a straw when you’re sick. Sometimes, home is the thing that matters the most. No matter what home does or is, it is home because it loves you.
However, there is a new home calling me, pulling me in quickly, suddenly, and it is unavoidable. Soon I will live in Colorado, and I won’t think of Olympia as my home anymore. Most kids will still call their hometowns home, but I will not. I am ready to go to my new home in my gold Honda Pilot, the same car that took me home so many times. In this new home I will not be taking my true family with me. So when I leave my family, I am going to be vulnerable to a new one, one that will make the University of Colorado home. As life drags you by your feet, the family you had before may not come with you. They will always be there, they will always be home, but life keeps going, and a new family makes a new house a home.
