My Practically Perfect Life

I know my heart is not a house, but I call it home.

I have never been homeless. Not in the literal term meaning without a place to live or living on the streets. I have also never been homeless in the metaphorical sense that I am talking about now. When I say my heart is my home, it isn’t saying I don’t have a home. It’s not saying I don’t allow others into my heart because it only has room for one! It means that wherever I am in life, I am home. As long as I am being true to myself and loving myself.

My career is real estate. I help people buy or sell their homes. Their houses that they lived life in. Lived as newly weds in, raised their children in, watched their family grow…and some get smaller. These houses are just material. It’s wood and nails and paint with pretty pictures to cover the walls. The walls may have markings on them, reminding you of your past. There could be a stain on the floor that brings back a memory. Your name could be carved in the concrete outside marking when it was poured. Regardless of the physical aspects that show the memories, it still is just a house. But it isn’t always easy to walk away from those walls that enclose your memories. Until you realize they don’t hold the memories, your heart does.

There is a song that Miranda Lambert sings called “The house that built me”. I like this song. It’s catchy but it also says a lot of what most people feel about their childhood homes. It puts that house into a shrine like figure that you have let absorb your memories. I can go to my childhood home that my parents still live in and remember my child hood. Sure there are memories, but as an adult the house seems less like a home. My parents are home to me. Not their house. My grandparent’s homes, those feel more full of memories. It has been hard for me to understand why. But I think I figured it out. My grandparents have all passed. They are not around to talk to, to hug, to look at and remember my past. But their homes are still there. The land I ran around on collecting rocks, the smell of fresh baked bread, and wanting to use all of the tools my grandfather used. The house that I got to watch The Dick Van Dyke show on at night because my grandmother had nickelodeon! Or do puzzles and crafts that I will never forget. These physical places help me remember because the people who I made the memories with are no longer here. My parents though, are still here. Which some how makes their house less of my home.

As for my home. My heart. My husband and sons are in my heart. The memories I have with them, the love I feel for them, all of that is inside my heart. So when I say that my heart is not a house but I call it home, this is why. Because no matter where I am, I am home. My home has been torn down, broken into, rebuilt and refurbished many many times. But it never went away. My heart has kept me alive physically, and kept me at home in every other way. As Dorothy said, “There is no place like home”. But home is where you make it. And I can’t think of a better place to call home.

“Home sweet home. This is the place to find happiness. If one doesn’t find it here, one doesn’t find it anywhere” -M. K. Soni