Home is Where the Farm is

When I was a kid on the farm the barn used to be the brightest of reds. It used to be full of animals and the worst smells my little nose had ever smelt. Coming back to see it now its almost sad, the wooden boards are rotting away and weeping with peeling paint. What’s left isn’t so red anymore its more of a brown, almost like when blood dries and it looks like rust on concrete. There hadn’t been a living creature in those stalls since we packed everything up and moved to the city. So much had changed but the memories still were so vivid, and that made the sad feeling seem more hopeful. If I close my eyes I can still smell the sharp scent of the hay and feel the warmth of the sun on my face. I had spent my whole childhood in the country and even now as an adult with a good job and my own family, I still look back on my time here and remember those days as the best of my life. The barn is old and tired now, it’s been through a lot just like I have. These walls watched me grow up, they watched me learn how to ride a horse and how to milk a cow. When I walk through the old creaky doors now I can remember exactly what it used to look like. Hay bails stacked up high against the walls and orange barn cats twisting around my ankles as I walked up and down the stalls petting the bristly coats of every single horse with my small hands. I can almost still feel it. The sun used to shine through the holes in the boards and you could see the dust dancing through the air. Even though the floorboards are worn down, and the walls are dull now, it feels like no time has passed since I was running through the barn with my muddy boots and grass-stained jeans. The memories are so sensory that they come flooding back with every touch, smell, and sight of the old farm. I often wonder what it would have been like if I had raised my own family in the country. I could repaint the wood to its crisp red glory, fill it with horses and cows, teach my kids how to stack the hay bails so they wouldn’t come tumbling down on top of you. They could make memories similar to my own, and I hope they would come back and remember it with the same fondness that I do. It could have been a place for them to learn and run wild without the limitations of the city and our apartment. We could fix the place up and make it look brand new, I’d leave the floors as they are though, so you could see how my footsteps wore the boards down over the years and we could watch them age with my kids and maybe even their kids. Nothing felt quite as nice as being out in the open with fresh air and sunshine surrounding you. Being in the city, I never realize how much I miss it until I’m back. Reminiscing about being a kid takes the stress of my daily life away, I feel like I don’t have anything to worry about out here. I can look out into the fields or stand in the middle of this old barn and let my thoughts melt away. No matter how much time has past, and no matter how old we both get, home is where the farm is.