Day 10: Houses

Home; a white Cape Cod with black shutters and a cranberry door, set behind a towering Japanese red Maple, planted over three decades ago when your brother was born.   The smells of Italian cooking wafting up the slate blue carpeted stairs, with Norman Rockwell scenes hung intermittently on the way up.
It is the soft sing-songing voice of Mom, awakening you.  The reason you still ring her on your way to work every morning, even since you’ve married and moved.  The soothing sound of her voice to begin the day, will always be home.
Home is Dad hammering away in the garage, always engaged in woodworking or undertaking a project to enhance the beauty of the family's safe haven.  Home is the echo of the melodies; the hum of voices of your brother and Dad, the picking of acoustic guitar, the harmonies, the inflections of their voices, traveling from room to room.

Somewhere along the line you grow up and move in with your boyfriend.  You approach a space with four white walls and it seems hard to imagine this house as a home.  So you slather the walls with primer, two coats cappuccino, a brick red accent room, and already the warmth has begun to spread.  Quilted cotton bedding, wood floorboards, farmhouse accents and an array of speckled golden glass votive holders give the necessary touches. It has a homey feeling, and yet suddenly, the truth surfaces.

Home is really when you slept on the mattress on the floor those first few nights when the space lacked any furnishings.  Talking into the evening without any cable, without any distractions.  Home is cuddling beneath the stars with a blanket on a chilly fall evening, hoping to catch a glimpse of the meteor shower.  Home is shrieking with laughter until you are both breathless.
Home is returning to the Cape Cod beneath the oak trees, plopping yourself on a rustic counter stool in the newly renovated kitchen, sipping wine, chatting with Mom and Dad.  You realize that together you make the starkest of houses into a home merely by being present and alive inside it.