My best friend's childhood home is for sale so I got to go online and take a peek at what the house looks like today, inside and out. We lived down the street from each other as kids, and lived in a very sweet little neighborhood with a row of houses on each side of the street - all exactly the same. The only difference between our houses is they are mirror images of each other. The houses were tiny, but they didn't feel small when we were growing up. There was plenty of room to be kids. We spent lots of time outside and in the woods behind the houses, as well as spending time in the recreation room (now called the family room). It was an ideal place to grow up.
I'm not sure I'm such a big fan of everything being bigger and (therefore assumed to be) better. Happiness doesn't come by the square foot and a fat wallet doesn't guarantee that it will be a good life. Of course we all strive to be financially secure and to be able to provide well for our families. But how much is too much? Big requires a lot of upkeep and better and better just costs more. Why does the car in my driveway have to be the biggest on the block or the most expensive? I'm not sure that for me, it does. Growing up, our little house in our little town wasn't the cause of my parents' fractured relationship or the source of my brother's mental illness. Living in a modest house in a tiny neighborhood didn't create any of my difficulties - I never even thought about wanting more than what we had because living small didn't mean I couldn't dream big. I never felt deprived living in that small place.
When I looked at the pictures of the rooms in that old house, I could picture where things were when I lived in my parent's house, so many years ago. I could picture exactly where our phone was on the kitchen counter and I could picture our furniture against each of the walls. The pictures of the house for sale showed lots of tender loving care went into maintaining that home. Growing up, my house wasn't very homey - it was always in chaos either emotionally or with "stuff' where it didn't belong. But, for whatever reason, I still have a good feeling about my old neighborhood. I'm all grown up and I have my own home and it's a place of refuge for me and my family. The house my kids grew up in was much bigger than mine as a kid, but regardless of its size, I want them to remember the love that was there and the happy memories we made together. After all, that's what makes a house a home.
No comments:
Post a Comment