Home.

I’m sure y’all have seen these tshirts. I am in love with them. But that’s not really the point of this blog post, I promise. Also, I don’t wear an xs in anything…more like excess.  
I’ll get to my point. I’m a child of divorce. When I was sixteen, my parents decided to end their marriage; this was not a decision that was made lightly. Looking back with my almost forty year old eyes, that are surely destined for bifocals this year, I can understand why. The one lasting reprocussion is my sense of home.  Both of my parents are remarried to lovely spouses. My dad and step-mom have a beautiful home that I love to visit, but it is not mine. My mom has been married for eleven years and I’ve never been to her house. Because, Huston. I have a hometown (ish) but there is nothing left there for me. My in-laws have a home that comes pretty close to feeling like home for me; surely, it is what my husband still yearns for when he feels homesick. I have a home I share with my husband and sons; it is home, most of the time. It will hopefully, when my children are grown, be home for them.

Home for me, especially around the holidays, is a one story brick ranch style house near the lake. Once upon a time there was a tree house in the backyard that my cousin and I “helped” my grandfather build. The day it was finished, my grandfather, Stocky, fried shrimp and we got to eat at the just-right height counter style table. I remember how scared I was climbing the ladder that seemed impossibly high.

Home, for me, has a fireplace thats hearth runs the length of the living room; I cracked my head on the bricks because I got too excited playing hi-ho cherry-o, my grandfather lifting me, carrying me to the queen size bed two adults and two children old enough to sleep alone would share.

Home, for me, has a galley kitchen where my grandfather would let us help bake cakes and my grandmother would fuss that raw cake batter would make us sick; he still snuck us spoonfuls.

Home, for me, is where I spent weeks of summer vacation. My grandmother working, taking me to day camp, always making the best sandwiches. It is also where I lived my freshman year of college and where I spent some time during dark days, being restored by the only two I believed in for a time.

Home, for me, is where I lost the James Avery puffy heart dangle ring my eleven year old boyfriend now husband gave me. It is where years later, I found the same ring. Home is where I spent every holiday as a child, where my cousin and I would play behind the Christmas tree and knock it down at least once a year.

Home, for me, is a big dining table where we eat supper, a bar where we snack and drink coffee, a house that no matter how many times it is painted and remodeled, still smells like home.

Home, for me, is knowing that my Teda is there, waiting patient and kind, and I can’t get there soon enough.