Growing up, I have always been infatuated with the idea of having stairs in my house. Not a pool, not a tree house, but stairs. I currently live in a one-story house. But every time I went to a friend’s two story house I would gaze in wonder at their marvelous steps which was always met with a, “dude what are you doing?”, as I crawled up the carpeted ledges on all fours. Even when my family was looking at houses during my middle school years, I would not even give a house that my mom had scanned on Trulia a second glance if it did not have a set of stairs. But any realtor could have sold my family any house; big or small, blue or yellow, stairs… or no stairs. But a realtor cannot top the people and animals that are going to live inside that house. And if there is someone that understands that better than I do, it is my mother and my childhood dog Fresa.
I honestly believe my mother lives to see her family at the end of the day. Whether my dad has just came home from the airport, or I have gotten back from school, she always greets us with a big hug and comments on how much she missed our company. Even if I have been holed up in my room for hours on end, she always genuinely greets me as if I have been gone for the past year. I feel that she is especially glad that we do not have stairs so she wouldn’t have to yell to call me down for dinner.
Then there was my dog Fresa, she had a more vocal way of greeting people. Being the round, 2-foot-tall Beagle that she was, would howl and howl even after you had already walked through to the door. “Oh my gosh you’re finally home. Hey guys she’s here!” she seemed to say. Even if you had been home all day, she would look for you and scratch and whine under your door until you came out. With that she would greet you with a bark as if to say, “hey I missed you!”. In retrospect, if we would have had a house with stairs, the last few months of her life living with cancer would have been impossible to climb them to say hello to me. The way my mother and beloved dog greeted me and everyone in our house is truly the thing that makes a house a home. Appreciating and treasuring the people within your house. Seeing them no matter what time of the day, no matter what mood someone is in, and having nothing but love for them. No matter where you are. Therefore, I know for a fact that it would not matter, and has never mattered what house my family lived in. My mother and my beagle would have loved and greeted me the same way every time I came home.
