My Home or Your Home

I was in my bright blue car, cruising down the road when I heard "Wagon Wheel" playing from my phone.  Knowing that is my mom's ringtone I answered it.  We chatted for a couple minutes and she asked where I was.  I told her I was heading home quick for a bit before I needed to head up to church. "Wait, your home or my home?"  "Your home."

When I was student teaching I moved back in with my parents as I was too busy to work and teach at that point in my life.  With it being hard to find a Social Studies teaching position when I graduated I stayed living there until last February when I moved out.

When I hung up the phone that day, I had a feeling of sadness that swept into my heart and held fast for a moment.  "Your home or my home."  As if those two places were now very different locations.

I'd lived in that rambler on Bryant for 18 years.  I'd moved between three different rooms, making each my own in different stages of my life.  I'd run across the street to grandma's house when mine became too much.  I'd learned to drive down that road.  Walked to my best friends house cutting through backyards and between fences.  I'd ridden my bike to the park and gotten a concussion on the way back.  I'd hosted a backyard party in high school before losing my group of friends.

Life had been lived.  Loved.  Lost.  All in that house.

And now, I'm renting.  It's a tiny little duplex I share with my best friend.  It works.  But the thought of this being my home, and not that house on Bryant, is a strange one.

As I sit here tonight, in the corner of my bed, eating string cheese, sweet potato chips and drinking a diet coke (dinner of champions my friends) I realize that this isn't temporary.  It is in the sense that I'm renting and eventually will need to buy a house.

However, this my home for this part of my life.  This is a chapter, not a page.  If that means that I need to find ways to make it "home" then I need to do so.

Bryant will always be my home, even if in conversation with my mother I can't refer to it that way.  They say home is where your heart is.  Well my heart is with my family.  On that street.  However, I think home is also where you choose to plant yourself.  For however short a time.

Which means I need to start treating this place like home.  Not like a temporary dorm room.  Home is important.  It grounds you.  It helps your roots take hold.

Even if later you need to dig them up and replant them somewhere else.

Remember, that many things in life can wait… but the beautiful purple-pink sunset outside my window,

Well, The Sunset Won't.