The first time I stepped foot in my new house, it felt huge and quiet. Sounds echoed and bounced off the walls. It was brand new, not a single-family has lived here. The house has a big blue door, with a small window. Just small enough to peak your eyes through. Huge windows spread all around. Those windows let in lots of light that brightens up the whole place. A small fenced backyard, with beautiful flowers resting in their flower beds. It’s in a neighborhood filled with lots of other houses. It looks just like the rest. Yet it’s special, it’s a place filled with love. It’s warm and welcoming from its blue front door to its vibrant backyard. It’s a safe place, an escape from the rest of the world. The place I call home.
I didn’t always call it home. At first, I didn’t like how huge it was. It was so big compared to what I was used to. It felt troubling, standing in a new house in a new town. All so unfamiliar, so different. I didn’t want this house to be my home. This new place, I had no intention of getting used to. I wanted to pack up everything and move back to the house that I lived in before. The pleasant little house, in a smaller town. The house I wished I could stay in forever. No matter how much I yearned to go back to that place. I had no choice, I had to stay here at this house that was so strange.
As years passed, living in the house got more comfortable. The rooms of the house no longer empty. I love sitting on my bed looking out the window. The sunlight shining through the window. Almost giving the same nostalgic feeling of sitting in the backyard of the house I grew up in. Feeling the sun on my skin sitting in a chair at the outdoor table we used to own. Giving a warm and cheerful feeling, enough to fill me with happiness. It took lots of time but the house became a place I looked forward to being. A place I like to come to after a long day at school.
Nothing in the house changed with time. It was still the same as the day I walked to the blue door for the first time. Same layout, same doors, windows, and rooms. Yet the feelings I had when I walked through the door changed. The light brown-colored house became warm and cozy. The memories and moments of being together as a family here are what make it feel like home. The Sunday morning breakfasts, The family movie nights. Every single laugh, joke, yell, and remark. Not the house itself, the people in it. That’s what makes this once big and empty house a home. It’s not the house itself that makes it a home, it’s the people in it and the love they fill it with.
