Home

When I used to think about what home felt like or looked like, I thought about the house I grew up in. I grew up in the same house until I moved to California when I was fourteen. Coming home used to be walking through the door, smelling hockey tape that infiltrated my senses as soon as I stepped in, hearing my dog barking while nipping at my feet and begging for attention, all while feeling the soft warm glow of cranberry scented candles that were placed all over the house. I reveled in the puck marks on the garage doors, and when my mom complained about it my brother and I used to say, “they’re not dents, they’re goals.” Home used to be hearing my brother shout at the top of his lungs while playing on his Xbox with his friends and my mother and I squeezing together on a one person couch watching whatever was on.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that the feeling of home was never a place. My family gave me the sense of home. If I were to walk back into my childhood house, it would no longer feel like my home. There are without a doubt changes that have made, most likely to the point where the house I once knew has become unrecognizable. Me, my mom, and my brother make it a home. Before we found a house in California, we had to live in a hotel for a couple months, and while we were cramped and confined in such a tight space, it still had a sense of home. It took me seventeen years to realize that the only thing I’ll ever need is my family in the same place for it to feel like home. It’s part of the reason that being at boarding school is so difficult. My mom is still in California, while my brother is going to university in Toronto, and I’m here, in rural Maine. It’s been four months, almost five, since we’ve all been together in the same place and I am more excited to return to my home.