Going Home Means

Going home is the streetlights that sits adjacent to the golf course, where straight would go to grandmas and left would take us home. Home Rivas burritos where it stays the size of my head, and I can only head three quarters of it. Home is the spirit of beaver nation and everyone who bleeds orange. It is the damp grass that feeds into the air, and the heavieness of the clouds that peer over our heads in any season other than summer. Home is the fifteen-minute communte to any part of town and the Bi mart and Safeway that is a mile away from my house. Home is the church a mile away from our house where our car ran out of gas with pizza in hand. Home is the straight away road where we ramp up our speed just to cruise around the S turn till, we see Mary's peak. It is the path that we walked our dogs down to the creek by where we climbed and swam through the waters. Home is the uneven pot holed gravel that led us to our house, where it worsened the more it rained, so much we called it Watten-pothole-lane. It is where we only can ever fit one car under the carport. It's the playroom door being our main form of entry.

Home is the locks never being latched and the one time it was we had to crawl through a window to unlock because no one had the key. Home is the concrete filled pool that once held numerous memories of high school girls and boys. Home is the concrete that stands beneath our feet and the salt eroded brick that lines it. Home is the paintings that canvas the wall since I was a toddler. Its the painted blue walls that changed from green earlier on. Home is the heated tile that we have slept on and depended on in the winter. It's the fireplace that crackles in the warmest and best of moments, where we notice the absence when no one has stared it. Home is the stained and scratched real hardwood floors that we have slid and marked throughout the years. Home is the collaged fridge of pictures of our lives and those we love carefully and chaotically holding. Home is the dirt you feel under your cold toes and the inevatble socks that are found on the ground. It is the Armour filled with paper, colored pencils and markers that mostly dont work. Home is the dysfunctional, functional drawers filled with old electronics and unknown files. Home is expired food that sits in our cabinets, mostly from my phase of baking and frosting cakes. Home is the foil wrapped leftovers, and the unknown dated items left not eaten. Its the colorful fiestaware bowls and plates that sit for everyone to see. It is the fiesta mugs that my mom treasures picking which one she will use today. Home is the pumkin walls that match the pool table in the same place that once had a wall that sepeated to different rooms. Home is the paintings on that wall we thrifted from a garage sale a few miles away. Home is the kitchen nook where we spent most nights playing games. Its the stack of shoes, belts and hats that sit in the laundry room. Home is the long hallway I would think about getting murdured around the corner when it was dark. It is the closet that held our sheets and wrapping paper that blocked the hallway. Home is the now guestroom that was once my second room. A painted windowsill and closet with a soft light lining the cieling covered with wooden scalllops. Home is how I fell off the bed in that room and cried. It is the many nights my mom would sing hush little baby in the room or taught me to read though a sentence I didnt understand.

Home is how each of my parents would interchange who they said good night to, it is how we always say good night to eachother. Home is the run from the cold bathroom floor to stand Infront of heater and change after a shower. It is where my brother and I would make up after our fights. It is where in my brother's room we gathered all the pots in the house to have a rock concert with drums. It is the heavy purple and red blacket that laid on his bed with his stuffed animal floppsy. Home is the master bedroom addition that is as large as the first side of our house. It is the nights we would tiptoe in and out of their bathroom because it was better and my dad had already fallen asleep. Home is the nights my dogs Prince and Griffin would sit beside me on the kitchen floor between the corner of the dishwasher and sink. It is the one man baseball game my brother would play in the front yard. It is the hours my mom spent throwing and hitting the softball with me. Home is the cards we made for eachother each holiday. It is the wrapping paper all over the floor after presents. Home is the home for countless invented games and gloatable card games with grandma. It is running around the house and being chased anytime my mom lost in UNO, or the times she would pick me up and drag me to the shower when I was to lazy to do it myself. Home is a place of countless memories. It is the place I can always come back to and everything is still the same but different. It's the house I moved rooms three times and the 20 years we drove home to see our Christmas tree in the window. Home is everything we have built our beautiful lives around. Home is us, home is where we can just be and where we are meant to be. That is what going home means.