Home is just an idea. An ideal that we have of fun, safety, comfort—a place to be. But my home is made of stories. Happy and sad, hardships and achievements, love and life. We go out every day to come back to this place we call home and continue the story of our family. All our stories start out the same, but change and grow as our lives move forward. That’s what home is there for: to give a space for those stories to warp and develop. Because like stories, home is constantly evolving.
To my Mom, home is two places, both our home we live in now and the home she grew up in. I hear about it all the time, from Mahjong to sausage rolls, to immigrating, to family. Her stories are filled with buckets and buckets of love. To my Dad, it’s similar, yet so much different. They are loaded to the brim with snow, skateboards, moving homes, and a seemingly endless amount of sisters.
In the same way that they both have their own different homes, I’ve only had the one home I have now. That little pink house in the alleyway is my safe haven of sorts. The world within those walls is a perfectly imperfect, muddy mess of all the things that make me, me. Of all the sweet little nothings that my parents sprinkle into my world in their own way of bringing life into mine. Walking down the hallways, feeling the cold wood on my feet, chilling me to the bone, an icy yet warm reminder that this is home. My dad’s old records spinning smooth white noise while the hammock creaks as my sister swings back and forth, an endless pendulum sending her high into the overhanging lights. We gather in the heart of our home every night to eat together, share our stories, and build on our ever-growing home.
Each time I’m told a story, it’s engraved into my mind with the smooth, painted fondness that the memories hold. Even the sad stories reminiscing in the times of loss have a touch of longing sprinkled into them. Because all memories are just that, memories. Not one moment in our lives is inherently bad or good, happy or sad. We decide that for ourselves after it passes, after it fades into memory. Because once we choose how to relive those moments in memory, you’ll miss it and think of home.