There’s No Place Like Home

“Be it ever so humble . . .”

Ours is. It frequently evokes phrases like, “If only we had one more bedroom” and “It looks like they didn’t invent storage until after 1952.” The plumbing often rattles behind the scenes at night like a tone-deaf symphony. The kitchen counters are routinely cleared of everything, but over time, one or two items appear, and then they seem to breed or invite a few friends over, or both, until sure enough: oy.

But as we continue to talk about our house, our comments become more about our home. We start saying things like, “But boy, in the spring for just a few minutes at dusk, when the last of the sun’s rays just glow through those curtains . . .” and “Remember our first Christmas tree, right over in that corner . . . ” and of course, coming home from anywhere, walking in the door, setting everything down in the most familiar of surroundings, and happily sighing, “Ahh.”

What I’ve realized is that a home is a lot like a relationship. A relationship is not insufficient because one of you never does this and the other one never does that. Nor is it a treasure because one of you makes $150K a year or can really keep up with the laundry. It’s a treasure because of the moments, like the time he sang you to sleep when you were sick, and the time she held you and stroked your forehead when you finally broke down, and that night you laughed so hard together you thought you’d stop breathing. The real value of a home, much like a relationship, is not what it brings to your life, but the life it brings to you.

No matter how flawed the partners, it’s those moments that make a relationship. And no matter how humble the house, it’s those memories that make it a home.