What makes a house a home?

What makes a house a home?  Is it the brick, cement, 2x4s, paint, blood, sweat, and tears that go into it?  Is it the money that you pay?  Is it the people that live there year after year?  I keep rolling this over and over again in my head as another chapter in my life ends.  I know I have talked about this in a earlier blog but we are still trying to find our new normal.  As my mom called me today to tell me that a piece of my childhood had been sold to someone else I just couldn't keep it inside anymore.  That one little piece of my life with dad seemed to be gone.  I know having the house was not going to bring him back, but I could still go to those places where I had so many memories.  

Then I started to look through some old pictures, as you can see from my collection below.  I remember our 1st day of school pictures in the front yard by our purple tree.  I remember the day my parents bought the Blue Van and drove up with it.  I also remember being in the front yard when my dad came home with my 1st puppy, Droopy.  I was so excited...I think the Tanners where there for that.  I remember many, I mean MANY, family water fights in the front yard.  I can hear the three of us giggling and laughing as I think about those days.

I remember the many pre-dance pictures taken in front of our fire place.  The picture of Bruce and I is from the night we got engaged (even though I didn't know that was what would happen that night).  Then look at us years later in front of the same fireplace with our little girl.  Even though Madelynn didn't get to know Papa it was like she got a piece of those memories because she got to be where he was last.  We could tell her the stories of the trains and the great times we had had.  Now, if we get to have another baby they won't get that experience.  

 

I began to look at the pictures of all the friendships we had made at that house.  Jessica and I became best friends at that house and she sat with me in my parents' bedroom while I threw up...what a friend.  The many nights of pictionary, sports team Christmas parties, youth sleep overs, giggling girls, and Christmas mornings have come flooding back to me as I take a mental walk down the halls of my childhood.  It feels like those walls have shaped who I am today.  They gave me protection since I was 2 years old.  Those walls protected me from storms, heard me cry silent tears, heard little girls on the phone falling in and out of love, those walls hold secrets between sisters that no one else will ever know and unspoken dreams as we fell asleep at night.  It was a refuge as I got older whenever I was sad and as we came home from AZ after dad passed away.  I could go into those rooms and still feel him there.  Oh the nights we spent in that garage having our "garage talks".  Sometimes dad would forget that I actually needed to go to bed and go to school the next day.  Boy, we could BS with the best of them.  Oh the hours we spent out there solving the world's problems, analyzing our day, and sometimes fighting.  We made science fair projects and inventions in that garage, little girls learned to ride their bikes from there, I sat up with my new puppy (Mandy) in that garage, we would sit and talk for hours as a family as dad had a beer and smoked his pipe, boys asked for our hands for marriage in that garage and Grady got his best train buddy ever.  The memories made just in that one room tear at my heart and make me want to go back in time so bad.  I know it is just a room, but it seems like such a part of me.                  

And the memory I will have trouble moving from the most will be the Christmas mornings we shared at that house.  I have spent every Christmas morning there, except for one, since we moved there in 1981.  As I watched my nieces and nephew this last Christmas ride their new bikes and skate down the same street we learned to ride our bikes on I realized this would probably be the last time we would all be together like this in our home, or is it just a house???  I can think back to so many Christmas mornings, so excited to see what Santa had left that I couldn't even wait for my sisters to get up.  I remember sneaking out in the middle of the night to look in my stocking (don't tell mom).  Wow, the laughter and fun (and one year with some tears - Whitney can tell you about that) are so alive I feel like I was just there a few weeks ago. 

So, what makes a house a home?  Are we leaving our house behind or our home?  Does our home live in our hearts because it is a part of who we are?  Can a building really be part of our identity?  Can a house shape who I am today or is it the people who have come and gone through that screen door who have made me who I am?  What will I miss most; the walls, stucco, paint, wood, cement and nails or the memories that came from all of that?  If we sell the house aren't those memories still there in my heart and mind?  Then why does it hurt so bad to see it gone? 

Goodbye Morgan Lane house, you have been my home for so many years.....