During the summer between fourth and fifth grade, I moved from Saskatchewan (a Canadian province) to Washington State. I was sad because I really liked my cozy home in Saskatchewan that dawned on a busy street, and a hotel surrounded by a ton of aureate lights that lit up during the night like stars. I also loved the gray stone path, leading up to the entrance, which was bordered with neatly trimmed hedge bushes and plants that bore little flowers during the short Saskatchewan summers. Therefore, when I first walked into my new house in Washington state, I was disappointed. The house seemed so empty, cold, and lifeless. I remembered that with no sound-interfering objects in the way, I could hear my voice bouncing off the walls as I talked.
When I walked towards my new bedroom window for the first time during the night, all I could see were the dark silhouettes of the surrounding houses. I remember that night, my mom asked me if I liked our new house. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, so I told her I liked it even though all I wanted was to go back to my real home in Saskatchewan that always seemed so charged with life. A few weeks later after the move, a truck arrived with all our furniture. The house started to be filled with objects that contained memories of my childhood but I still didn’t see this house the same way I saw my house in Saskatchewan.
But then gradually over time, I started seeing the upsides of my new house that my old house didn’t have. I started loving how during the hazy summers, I could see beautiful Azaleas on either side of the wooden steps leading up to the front door. I enjoyed listening to the sound of water as I watered all the plants in the garden, knowing that they will soon blossom into flowers. I started enjoying how rare snow was, and that every time when it snowed, it was like a treat–I could comfortably watch the beautiful scene of snow falling gently flake by flake and gathering slowly on the pines of the surrounding evergreen trees through the glass door of my cozy heated house while sipping a sweet cup of hot chocolate.
I started becoming so attached to all the little details that made my new home special that, when I went back to Saskatchewan three years ago, and walked into the house I so desperately wished I could go back and live in, I felt like a tourist walking into a hotel room I just booked. So now after having lived in this house, my home, for five years, I came to learn to enjoy the many unique aspects of it. To me, a house is an object that lacks vitality and a home is an environment with a heart that beats energetically.