I live in the “middle of nowhere.” The neighbor-less neighborhood is where home is for half of the time as the other half I live in an ever-growing college city, Columbia. I have cultivated a special appreciation for each journey home through the winding Missouri back roads that bring me to the place where my soul rests, so matter how many times I make the drive. The roads may take me to my house, but my home exists far beyond its walls. Circling around my white, two-story house there is a field of scratchy grass and flowers with a path cut directly down the middle. If you follow the path, the creek rests behind it. The creek houses memories of my sister and I journeying out into the wilderness by ourselves (despite the fact that the creek was still in our “backyard”). To us, the world was small enough that the creek by the house became a whole new planet every visit. Snapping turtles turned into legendary stories we brought up yearlong, and a hollowed, gnarled Oak stuck out so far over the stream we envisioned bears resting beneath. We kept active by trudging around the creek in knee-high muck boots chattering about setting up forts. A couple stray boots lost their lives to the mud that our stick legs could not suck out of. I always trekked alongside my sister; consequently, in any memory I have of the creek I am never alone. In contrast, the swing set sits alone in the yard; it has become dejected without a child to squeak its chains in years. Its wood has never seen a
Family is defined differently for everyone. Family members can live down the street or in another country. Some people have close knit families while others do not. Similarly, home is also defined differently for everyone. Some people might believe that home is just the house they live in, and with each move comes a new home. Others, however, believe that home is where their family is. People use family as a way to define home in slightly different ways. For example, in her essay “On Going Home,” Joan Didion writes about wanting to give her daughter “home” for her birthday. Didion describes her home as being where her family is. In his essay, “Coming Home Again,” Chang-Rae Lee uses his mother as a way of defining his home. In the third
Hello everyone! Welcome to our first meeting for the production of “A Solid Home”. I am very excited about what we can create together and I want us to be able to get started right away. For this production, our guiding concept is going to be “Death can be livelier than life.”
My definition for home is indescribable by word or by a simple thought, but home is rather of a feeling. Home is the calmness and serenity that settles over me like a blanket on a cold,snowy night, just a silent assurance telling me I belong there. It took me quite a bit of time to understand where exactly that place is, and I didn’t know that the answer was always right in front of me. This feeling would come and go, and I would never recognize it because I knew that only the house I lived in was my home. Home is in fact more than what the words in the dictionary say.
Child care quality is a well-documented predictor of children's intellectual and social development. Family childcare providers care such as Heaven’s Little Angels in Hopkinsville, KY provide care for children in the provider’s home during traditional working hour. Parents choose family childcare homes because it offers a home-like setting. Childcare homes usually have a mixed age group with a collection of infants, toddlers and preschoolers; therefore, rendering a more family oriented atmosphere opposed to a traditional classroom atmosphere.
I have lived in the same small house on Honey Creek road my entire life.The front yard is full of bright green grass, that stands just a little too tall. One ditch is on each side of the long black cement driveway. At the beginning of the driveway are two large, solid boulders. My front yard is large compared to the neighboring yards. It is where my siblings and I would play tag and other games during late summer nights and would build snowmen on cold winter evenings. The same yard that my brother has spent countless hours push mowing the too tall, bright green grass. Looking at the front view of my house, the siding is a light gray and covers the entirety of the one story house. There is a tall red brick chimney off to the right but is hardly ever caught breathing smoke. The roofing is a dark blue with black speckles and the front door is a matching blue painted on very thick. On the front door is a brown wreath hung by a burlap bow. The word family, in a bubbly font, is neatly centered in the middle of the wreath.
“Wow” My mom said glancing to the side of the road and behind a large grey building. “It seems so barren now.” she said shifting her eyes back onto the road, her hair fluffing up as she shakes her head. “I can’t believe they’re chopping down so many trees.” I heard sadness bubbling up in her voice as the traffic light turned green and my mom drove the car forward. I look back at the empty plot of land, a place that used to be packed with trees, trees that had been there for hundreds of years. I watch the desolate yard of stumps fade off behind us as we continue on home. The thoughts still roam around in my head. How many trees does it take before they stop? One more? Ten more? A hundred more? Or will the only reason to stop be the extinction of them as a whole?
I stood for a second and took a deep breath of fresh air. The crisp, untouched air flowed as I inhaled the new environment. Too much air began to drift towards me because I was the only one there. It seemed as if everything around me was empty yet, I knew there were others around. It was a surreal moment, nothing but my thoughts and my family populated the airport. As we slowly wandered to the car, the quiet and serene area engulfed us. We remained silent the entire journey to the car; we were too shocked about moving to Michigan to talk. Clear droplets slowly began to fall on the window pane. Each one becoming more and more aggressive and mesmerizing. The loop of the pitter-patter was all I could hear even though my parents were making small talk. In Mexico, I would watch all the people on the street, all the stores and billboard signs and tall buildings. My favorite thing to watch were the lights on a car when it was raining, but now no one would stay close enough to see their lights though the backseat window. My dad was excited that we had come “home”, but it wasn’t home anymore. It’s just where we had once lived and where my family was. People always say that your home is your family, but that’s just a cutesy fib they put on cooking shows to make you love your family. The smooth roads and empty streets, are not my home. They are this weird place that feels like a pile of dirt. It’s not very exciting or rare. You can look through it and find a few special gems, but
Everyone dreams about buying his or her dream house; I lost my dream house, twice. When my girlfriend Izzy and I began house searching, it was a whirlwind of excitement. This was our first hunt in the real estate market, and we were ready to close in on the perfect first house. Suddenly we were staying up into the late hours of the night, cuddled in bed, endlessly searching for houses on Zillow. Throw pillows, dishes and pictures began to jump off the shelves at us in every store we entered. We anxiously imagined every aspect of what we wanted in our house. The rush of chasing down the ideal house and making it our home was thrilling, yet short lived.
As you pull into the driveway you see a black mailbox. You see the house is light brown starting on the right side there is a small garage door to the right of that there are three beige large garage doors. As you move to the other side you see a overhang with a tiny bell and a flag over it. Once you move over some more you see some glass four by six windows covering the rest of the front of the house.
It was 5 on a chilly October morning, the sky was still dark, and the silence was peaceful. There was a few people on the road crossing into Juarez was what took the longest. After waiting in line for what felt like an eternity I weighed my bags and passed through security, I was handed a ticket with a destination to Mexico City. After 3 hours of being on an airplane, I could see the ground, tiny streets filled with people and cars everywhere I looked, huge buildings of every color, and a golden angel that stood in the sky in the middle of the city. I had finally arrived to Mexico City, without knowing how long I would live there or if I would ever leave.
We’re late. It’s nothing out of the ordinary. We live three minutes away, yet every weekend we manage to be running late for Sunday morning mass. It’s always been this way, but my family doesn’t seem to want to change that habit, even if it means that we might get stuck with the worst seats: the ones in the front row. My friends don’t spend their Sunday mornings waking up early to put on their fancy Sunday dresses, a lot of them never had to. Majority of my friends’ families spend their Sunday mornings packing coolers with ice teas and musubis for the beach, or are able to sleep in until one o’clock in the afternoon. That was never the case for me; I’ve spent all my Sundays waking up early to attend service at a place where I am able to call my other home, my church. It’s the hospitality and the community, generally, the acts of love that make me feel welcomed.
My eyes opened slowly and unexpectedly. I yawned and stretched my body out across my mattress, arms out reaching high above my head, getting the joints warm and flexible. I sat up on the bed and looked around the near pitch black space that was my bedroom. My eyes have yet to adjust to the darkness, but I knew where everything was, all committed to memory. My room forms the shape of an L; The door leading into my room opens up to a space five feet wide and it opens up to the rest of my room in a square shape. In the right-hand corner of the room lies my bed against the wall, jet-black sheets covering the bed that I currently sit on with matching pillowcases and a white fleece blanket that wasn’t covering me at the moment, so it was probably on the floor. Next to my bed was my desk, very large and made of redwood, with three drawers on its right side and one under where the middle of the desk was. In the corner opposite of me on the left side of my room was my bookshelf, filled to the brim with all sorts of books, each one I had a very strong fondness for, and on top of it a globe and a random mess of papers, journals and writing utensils that I use for schoolwork. Directly right to the bookshelf was the small wooden nightstand that my 22-inch flat screen TV sat atop, several of my favorite DVDs and video game cases on it as well and on the floor beneath the stand was my Playstation 4 console and my 2 controllers
The idea of home is a loose image for me, one that wobbles and threatens to be blown away at the lightest breath. Home will never be a singular place, as I’ve become familiar with too many walls, each a distinct color of beige that is friendly, but not inviting, like a stranger you greet briefly as you skirt around them on the sidewalk. Each house a place to hold the memories I’ve placed in objects, a shell against the cold wind of time that bites harshly at the thin jacket that objects offer to recollection. Houses are nothing more than a box that contains that which I hold dear. Old pictures taken with friends against the hazy background of a summer night 10 years ago, a snow globe from my mother’s business trip, a letter from my brother, all things I would consider to be childhood home above an actual house. Home isn’t a place, it’s an intangible thought that I hold sweetly in my head, one that reminds me of the good, the bad, and those who have touched me throughout my life.
Where was home? I could never find it. Not in the old apartment I used to live in, not in the house I lived in now. The closest I remembered ever getting to the feeling of home was in my room, but it still didn 't feel right. It hid from me. It taunted me. I could never catch it. Then we went to visit a country, my home country. România. We landed in the main city, Bucharest. However, as the landscape settled, creating a picture holding familiarity, it stirred no sense of nostalgia. Nonetheless, it was still a sight to see, holding the wealthy, holding the beggarly, and the city dawning with art and vulgarity. The aforementioned was a horrid beauty, the Hunchback of Notre Dame in a beautiful Europe. But among all the grime, the city seemed
Like I have, if you haven’t already, you will be purchasing your first house. The budgets of what you can afford will vary, and not everyone is going able to afford their dream homes that we wish we could. Like I did some may have to find a home with potential and express their style to make it the way they want it, and create their “dream” home. Scrolling through Pinterest, labeling a board “future home” is what most girls do. While my “future home” may not be complete when buying it like I wanted it to, it is now mine. I have an open canvas to work with and endless ideas to help design everything I have ever wanted. Deciding what colors to go with for the walls, what textured carpet to but in the bedrooms, or what floors to