I'll never forget the first night I spent in this little brick cottage by the side of the road: my husband and I had been married nine months, spending all of it in a tract house in a busy neighborhood that never, not even for a second, felt like home. We heard of this rural property from a lifelong church friend, it was her grandparents' home and was ready for a renter. It didn't hurt that it was a mile from my parents and even closer to the local gas station, where we could fill up on Cheerwine slushies and ice cream sandwiches any time we wanted.

So we said yes to a year-long lease - we assembled complicated IKEA chairs with a flashlight one Halloween evening. We filled the tiny rooms with secondhand furniture and thrifted art. We scrubbed the linoleum floors until they shined and I made curtains to cover the laundry room cabinets. Then, when it was all as ready as it was going to be, we moved in. There were only five rooms in the entire place and that night, there were people in all of them: well-meaning cousins, parents, and siblings who had all come to help us get acclimated. After the sun had set, I slipped away to the backyard.

The moon was shining high above the clothesline, the towering maple trees were blowing in the autumn breeze. I looked out at the acres and acres of farmland that comprised our backyard. I thought about the creek at the very end of the property, the blueberry bushes and muscadine vines. I thought about that Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros song, "Home" and cried tears of pure joy and contentment.

That was almost ten years ago. In the decade that has happened since, we stretched and buried our roots deeply into this little place. We lived here for three years as green newlyweds. I'd come home every day after work with armfuls of vintage dresses for my online shop. He learned how to homebrew and we planted four gardens in those early years. There wasn't an inch of the house that didn't need a little TLC and we couldn't afford to give it the makeover it deserved, but we learned in those tiny hallways and narrow rooms, what it meant to turn a house into a home.

Then, an opportunity came. Another family home became vacant, where we could live rent-free. Making that move would get us one step closer to building a place of our own one day. It was a quarter-mile down the road, move-in ready and for all intents and purposes, a smart move.

Still, I fought it with every fiber of my being - leaving the cottage just didn't feel right. I remember scrubbing the walls down and vacuuming the hardwoods on that last day we were in here. Maybe it was The Head and the Heart playing on my phone, maybe it was the way that the pin oaks by the driveway were casting the same October shadows they did that year we moved in, or maybe it was the fact that I was expecting our first child. Either way, I sobbed into my soap bucket so hard that I couldn't see to wipe down the mirrors or clean the toilets. I remember leaning against the entryway, letting out a deep sigh and thinking that maybe, just maybe, the universe would bring us back together again.

We spent two years away from our cottage and every day, I would drive by it on my way to work. Someone new moved in and started renting from our neighbor. The side porch where I'd planted my begonias and swept every evening was covered with mismatched furniture, buckets, and odds and ends. The shrubs I had so meticulously cut were going awry and threatening to overtake the pretty windows.

One late August night, my husband and I laid in bed. Our newborn daughter was sleeping in the other room beside us. "What if we bought it?" he asked into the dark. I didn't have to ask him what he meant or where he was talking about. I knew exactly and it was as though I'd been holding my breath for the entirety of those two years, just waiting for him to have that idea. I kissed him and we laughed at how exciting and crazy and kind of ridiculous the whole idea was. After all, the home was almost 70 years old, it was in desperate need of repair, we had never even been allowed to see the attic (our landlord used it for storage), and the basement leaked every time there was a big storm. Besides, weren't we planning to build one day?

Instead, we took all of our savings and poured it into the biggest remodel our little town had ever seen. We tore down walls, completely rewired, finished off both the upper level and basement, added two new bedrooms and bathrooms, tore out cabinetry, redesigned the living room, and so much more. We were the first people to buy the home, apart from the original owners. We signed paperwork, drew up property lines, transferred utilities, signed the deed book and suddenly, it was ours. It took us two years to complete the project and by the time we finished, I was pregnant with our second child. Still, on that first night there, so many years later, I again felt a deep sense of home.

My son is now two and my daughter is four. They've never really known a house besides this one. Like us, they've made their mark on every surface of this place and have grown so attached to this makeshift dream home. Still, we are planning this autumn to pack up our boxes again and head a few miles down the road. My husband's grandfather's estate has been settled and we are set to buy it from his parents. It is a lovely home that sits far off the road, planked on three sides by cornfields. There is another creek, more woods, flowering cherry trees, and Bradford pears that bloom in the springtime.

I know we'll make more memories there. I know that our kids will look back on their childhood and really only see this new place. They'll likely forget that every afternoon, we swang together on the tiny side porch of that little cottage. They'll forget the blueberries under the sink, the way the laundry room floor started to creak after one too many spilled sippy cups, their nurseries and bedrooms where we read bedtime stories and held dance parties until way too late into the evening, and the kitchen where the light spills onto the countertops like nothing you've ever seen before. They won't remember looking out at my bedroom window to see if the blueberries were in bloom yet, or running into the muscadines to pick a bowl full for cobbler.

They'll ride their bikes down this new, long driveway and won't think twice about the home by the side of the road from so many moons ago. But we will. I will. And every time I drive by it to go to church, or to the local ice cream spot, the swimming pool, or the playground, I'll take a second look. Is anyone reading on the side porch like we used to? Is anyone running through a sprinkler in the back? What about the front stoop? Did the new owners fix that one brick? Have they discovered the parade of butterfly stamps on the back bedroom door, the ones my daughter was so proud of and I could never scrub off? Do they know how beautiful 6:00 AM is in the kitchen? Maybe, maybe not. Life marches on and stops for no one, I suppose. But this time, I wish it would just crawl.