Tangible Home

It's funny how "home" becomes such an abstract term once you hit the transition from kid into adult.

Or does it?

Home for me is a conglomeration of smells, sounds, and sights, but it's also the people and feelings that come along with it. It's my landmarks on the drive between Mom's and Dad's. It's the clean laundry and air freshener smells that hit me when I walk into my dad's. It's the cooking and cigarette smells right when I open the back door to my mom's. It's the park my cousins and I used to walk to all the time when we were younger. It's the sound of trains in the distance and highway traffic beyond the front yard. It's the noise of kids, dogs, and talking when I walk into my aunt's house. It's where I can be the most relaxed, have fun, and just be. It's where I don't have to feel the pressure of fitting into expectations.

So is home really "abstract"? Okay, fine, that's one way to look at it, but I prefer to think of it as a real and expanding concept. Home started with my family. Home will always mean my family, but now I've been lucky enough to find some spectacular friends along the way who are also home to me. The things that take me back to that relaxed, blissful feeling are part of a growing list.

~"Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule." [-Frederick W. Robertson]~

LOOK! A BONUS QUOTE!!

~ "Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room. [- Harriet Beecher Stowe]~