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Words From Another That Feel Like My Own

It's fascinating how we're taught that 'home' is this tangible place, the most simply defined of terms-

it's a house,

a postcode,

a country.

And yet sometimes home cannot be explained by a street number;

sometimes it's a face, a voice,

a laugh more honest and familiar

than any truth you have ever known.

We're taught that in its most literal sense, home is where we live and grow.

But one day, in the silence that follows nostalgic stories and subsequent laughter, you may realize that you never did more living or growing than when you had certain people by your side.

And suddenly,

you are home.

K.R.R

Hi my dudes.

The writing above is something I saved as soon as I came across it because it totally captured how I felt. Writing it out now, I still feel the same and I understand how to express and explain myself a little more clearly.

My home, in the literal sense, is the quaint green house on 1 Pine Street with the red door, lush garden, and driveway filled with cars. This house is on a street that doesn't see much traffic and we all like it that way. It's close to the hospital and perfectly situated just outside of downtown. It's where I keep my excessive clothes that don't tend to fit in my suitcase, and it's the address I write on all my forms that require me to state where I live.

But it's more than that. It's where my parents sleep, eat, play games, watch baseball, and bicker lovingly. It's where I still climb the stairs up from the basement a little more quickly ever since I was 6 and my siblings chased me around wearing a scary mask. It's where I remember running on carpet, slipping, and falling onto a chair corner- which resulted in a trip to the hospital over dad's shoulder and 5 stitches in my forehead. This green house is where I cried, screamed, pouted and wallowed for reasons only known to the youngest child in a family. Sounds terrible, doesn't it?

Surely though, some things must have gone well.

1 Pine Street holds so many good memories that it'd be a challenge to list even my top 10.

In all truth, this house has also been one of the most welcoming of places I have ever known. A space where friends are always free to come and go, most without even needing to knock on the front door. I could, on a whim, invite over a single friend or a full class of strangers to come for dinner and somehow everyone would still leave satisfied and with a smile on their face. Countless sleepovers have been held here, as well as in a tent we would set up in the side garden. I remember gathering with friends in the basement hoping mom and dad wouldn't hear our PG13 movie and come down to bust us while, in retrospect, I'm sure they heard everything. And then, years later when our gatherings moved to the kitchen and childlike movies were replaced with beers, jokes, and stories but anyone was still welcome to spend the night. It's where my brother and sister had similar experiences with all of their friends and I was around but always too young to take part.

This house is where I used to play basketball for hours on end in the driveway with my cousin, jump and giggle until I had a headache on the trampoline, and where I spent way too long getting my ass handed to me as my grandfather beat me in a card game called crib. It's also later where my mother's entire side of the family gathered to mourn his death by playing a round-robin crib tournament taking breaks for stories and memories with each new game. 1 Pine Street is a place, a number, a postcode but really it's so much more than that.

Here we have grown, fought, loved, cried, and laughed. We have created more memories here than we will ever be able to properly appreciate. These things happened though not because of the house, but because of all of the people inside who make it a home.

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