On my way home from work, I go past a beautiful three-story home made of salmon-colored brick, a green roof, two green front doors and white trim. I admire the beautiful backyard, barely visible from the road - a large hill, a pool and a white dock sitting upon a gorgeous lake. While you can't see these things from the road, this house also has three handprints of 9-year-old triplets forever captured in the cement by the pool, the world's best cat buried in the backyard and enough memories to fill a book.
Just four years ago, the upstairs back bedroom was painted pink and belonged to me. My bedroom had a quaint window seat that could oversee the entire backyard, including my dog playing in her smaller fenced in area, my brother fishing down by the lake and my Mom mowing. My bedroom had been white, then light green, then brown and then pink. I had once shared my bedroom with my sister, where we spent countless nights playing dolls in the small space between our two twin beds.
While this house is now inhabited by a new family with kids of their own, I can't bring myself to say it belongs to them because in my heart, it still belongs to my siblings and I. It belongs to the three children who spent ages 6 to 18 playing, arguing, adventuring and fighting in that backyard. My room most likely isn't pink and the kids who live there now have no idea that my sister's Ouija board experiences revealed several ghosts living in the basement, that the blue stain on the bathroom floor is from my first abstract painting or that my brother once caught and named every fish in the lake. When I see this house, it still looks like home.
We have all heard the phrase "Home is where the heart is," but what happens when you move from your home and leave your heart behind? Our new house isn't bad, but it doesn't feel like home. Our current house isn't the house where I lost all of my baby teeth, woke up early to try and spot Santa on Christmas morning or learned to ride my bike. This isn't the house where I had play dates and knew all of the best spots for hide and seek. This isn't the house where my siblings and I snuck out of our bedrooms to play games together after Mom thought we were asleep. When we moved from our old house, we left a cat buried in the backyard, my magical childhood memories and part of my heart.
For those of you who still live in your childhood homes, I hope you know how lucky you are to come home from college and sleep in your childhood bedroom with your cartoon-character sheets. For those of you who don't have your childhood home to go back to, my first advice to you is to make as many memories as possible in your new house and focus on making happy memories. Watch movies with your parents, make your siblings play games with you even when they don't want to, and laugh as much as possible.
Hang up decorations from your childhood home and always remember the fun of the silly childhood games you played in your first backyard. Never forget the thrill of patiently waiting to be found during a game of hide and seek, the feel of sneaking downstairs to try and catch a glimpse of Santa or the excitement of waking up in your own bed after being gone for a while. Remember that it isn't about the house you live in, but who you share it with. Moving from your childhood home is horrible, but if you still have your family and your memories, then you have everything.
