Home is where the heart is.....

I was thinking about homes this morning.  Why?  Hell if I know - it's all in the blog title, people.  I ramble.  A lot.  Especially in the confines of my brain, early in the morning, while waiting for the coffee to kick in, or sometimes in the evening when no one is bothering me to look for whatever it is they've misplaced.

My mother absolutely refused to sell her house.  She was of the thought that it was our "home," that we grew up there and how could she ever possibly leave it?  Even though the neighborhood was going to hell in a hand basket, quickly.

What she failed to realize is that, despite her skewed thinking on the subject, the memories of that house was not all grins and giggles, sparkles and glitter - for us or her.  She also failed to realize that neither of her children would ever call that house "home" again once we moved on into our adult lives.

My entire childhood was spent in that house.  My son, on the other hand, is currently on his sixth "home" although I think he only remembers three of them.  And while I miss one particular house sometimes (until I remember how tiny the kitchen and bathrooms were) - where he spent most of his formative years and where there was a record of his growth on one of the walls (which the new owners painted over! How COULD they?! But, to be fair, they didn't know us then.  A different story for a different time) - I know deep in my heart that a house does not make a home.  The people inside those houses make a home.  I also know (as much as I don't want to admit it) that this is not our last move (oh dear God I can't face another move - even if it's 15 years from now!).  I'm sure we will move at least one more time before all is said and done; which is kind of funny in itself as I clearly recall Hubby emphatically stating (two houses back) that "this" will be our last house! Yeah, so much for his emphatic statements.....  I also know that even had we stayed in one spot all these years - that one day my  Man-Child will move on and out and find his own "home" leaving Hubby and I to figure out a new configuration of "our" home.

On my last trip home (funny, how you can consider a whole state "home" though....), I took the time, as I always do when I'm there, to drive through the old neighborhood and past the old house. The neighborhood, which was never fabulous to begin with, had reached the point were I didn't feel safe - even though it was broad daylight and I was in a locked and moving vehicle (my father even recoiled in horror when I'd told him I'd been by there - and told me not to go back again).  And even though I haven't thought of that house as "home" for many, many, many, many years - there is a twinge of sadness seeing what it had become, in what it should have been.

Will I go back, next time I am in Texas?  Most likely.  Because even though they say you can't go home again - you can always drive by slowly-with the doors firmly locked.