What is a Home

I recently read this quote in a Real Simple Magazine and for me it explained home perfectly.

Home is a place that feels deeply personal and particular, such that when you walk through the door, it’s obvious only you could live there. It’s a space where you’re surrounded by a unique collection of decor, keepsakes, and mementos – a lamp you got on a trip to turkey, or a framed picture from your 40th birthday. Home means being cocooned by happy memories.
Christine Pride. Coauthor of We are not like them

My parents bought our home at 10607 Maple Bend Drive in 1967. Our house sat on a lot and a half. This meant our yard was pretty big. We had a huge garden where we grew raspberries, strawberries, zucchini, rhubarb and tons of other veggies. We had beautiful flower beds and so many trees. We spent a lot of time together working in the garden.

We also had a two story garage. The lower level was my dad’s workshop, a couple of freezers, skis, snow shoes and an old Ford Model T that had belonged to my grandfather. The second level had an art studio for my dad and an office as well as tons of storage space. My dad built a balcony on the second floor of the garage which made it pretty easy for us to climb over and on to the garage roof where we played as kids.

He also built a big deck on the back of the house with storage underneath for canoes and extra wood. We had a rectangular trampoline in our back yard that was accessed 9 times out of 10 by jumping off the deck.

Our house was a split-level. Just 1800 sqft. You would walk in the front door and you were in the entryway. There were stairs going up to the main level and stairs going down to the basement. In the basement my dad built rooms, closets, built in beds, desks and shelves. There were three bedrooms, a small bathroom, Laundry room, cold storage, sewing area, TV room and a playroom under the stairs. My dad made good use of the space. The basement was cold so we had a fire in the fireplace a lot in the winter. Some time in the late 70s my parents decided carpet in the basement would warm it up. They collected carpet samples and scraps from stores all over town and laid a patchwork of colors and styles together. They were so resourceful! On the main level we had a living room, dining room, kitchen, full bath, three bedrooms and my parents had a half bath in their room. Did I mention there are seven kids in my family?

So much of what surrounded us was made by hand. Paintings, pottery, things made out of wood, quilts, afghans and even our clothes! When I was in elementary school my dad painted a mural in the bathroom. A rain cloud over the shower with big droplets of water, a rainbow made whole by the mirror that covered one wall, a pot of gold, a pond and some little creatures. It was magical.

In our home we were all cocooned by happy memories.

I could write for days about my childhood home. About every little memory and detail. How comfy my parents bed was and how fun it was to sit in their bed and look at their gallery wall of family and school pictures in mismatched frames. How our green carpet upstairs felt under my feet and how perfect it was for playing Pick up Sticks. How much fun it was to watch thunderstorms and snow falling from the big windows in our family room. Every project accomplished and lesson taught within the walls of our home lives in my heart still today.

I loved that house, we all did. Recently my Aunt Kathy shared a photo with all of us kids of my mom and dad in front of our house the day they moved away. They moved to a new town and a new house after living on Maple Bend Drive for 41 years.

When they moved I was so worried that their new place wouldn’t feel like home to me. I was grown with my own family and I would never live in that new home, I would only be a visitor. But my mom and dad filled their new home with all the treasures from the old one.

When you walked in the door it was obvious it was the Weight’s house.

They planted and new garden and new trees. With a new workshop in the garage at the new house my dad continued to make pottery, paint and do wood working. In the new house my mom had a big sewing room. My dad made her a large sewing table for quilting (it also doubled as a bed when family came and they put a mattress on top). Our family and school pictures were there in the same frames they had always been in. My mom and dad are both now passed. There is no home to go back to, no physical space. It was so hard to imagine never going back into that house. I loved that home. We all did. Now all the things my mom and dad created and collected are in the homes of all of us kids. Lodi California, St. Louis Missouri, Snohomish Washington, Houston and Corpus Christi Texas and two in Saudi Arabia. Recently I visited my sister in Houston. So many memories came as I saw things from my childhood home now in her home. Home is not a space, it is a feeling in our hearts sparked by memories. Home really is being cocooned by happy memories.