What Makes a Place a Home?

For Sale: My Home

We are not strangers to moving to another area. That is what drove me to become a freelance writer and author in the first place. I would be working in PR for a college if it weren’t for my husband’s dreams to chase after retail management positions around the country.

This time, we are moving back home, if you describe home as being the place you were born.

Except it doesn’t feel like going home. I am happy to be closer to our families and friends and able to visit more. Perhaps my children will now be able to have stronger relationships with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. I will see my nieces and nephews more often. I may see my brothers more than once or twice a year. Unlike the last 14 years of parenting, I may have someone local to put on the emergency contact list.

At the same time, I am leaving a home that I have built, although only part of that is literal. There is a foundation built by relationships that makes it hard to leave. Our friends who helped us lay the tile floor in our sunroom. My carpool ladies who get my kids where they need to be for sports practices and games, or lend me their kids, so I can hear what is going on in the teen world when it is my turn to drive. My neighbors I can call to check on my house, ring my bell, feed my cats, or check if their power is out, too.

We made this our home, not out of birthright or location, but from interacting with the community, neighbors and friends. Building relationships that bridged this vast landscape of parenting and life. I have seen inside the lives of neighbors and friends. We shared stories, sad and happy, and watched our children grow up together.

It is the only home my children have known.

Their home, where they learned to crawl, then walk, then tie their shoes.

I lie, the little one can’t tie his shoes. He is nearly seven and I feel like a failure about that.

We are going home, my husband says, but I am not so sure about that. I feel I am leaving mine. I’m not. We are simply moving to make a new home. It may take some time to feel that way, and memories will have to build. We will do things to our new house that make our mark and leave a footprint.

Because truly, home is wherever these people are. J