Home is Wherever I'm With You

It’s 8:30pm and I just poured a glass of wine. The kids are in bed and PJ is on the couch beside me. We are home. We’re in our favorite place in the entire world and I couldn’t be more content. I wrote about our love for home here and it really is something that’s been on my mind so much lately.

Home is, of course, wherever those who mean the most to you are. Even if it’s not permanent for you and your loved ones, home is, by nature, more of a feeling than it is a physical place.

But this house, the one we wake up in every day and go to bed in every night, has more meaning to me than any other place we’ve called home. Of course it does, because this is the place I grew up in. This is the 99 year old house where I was raised, where my mom worked three jobs to send her three kids to Catholic school and put food on the table every night. This is where I watched cartoons on the little TV in the kitchen, with its peeling wallpaper and almond-colored tile floor. And it’s where our children now do their homework in the office. Where they climb underneath the kitchen island and scoot along the wooden floor. Where they run up and down the hallway upstairs when they should be brushing their teeth in the bathroom instead.

It’s where we do life every single day, and it feels at once nostalgic because it’s where I grew up, but also very modern and present for how we’re raising our own children here. This house is a lot bigger than when I lived here before, with enough bedrooms and bathrooms for everyone, and it’s now decorated the way I always wished I could have done when I was little, so it is very much a different house all together, but it still feels the same.

It still feels warm and cozy and lived-in and like an actual family does life within these walls. There are still clothes on every sofa like there was when I was young, much to PJ’s disdain, and there are our children’s art papers hung up on the wall. There are bills on the counter and toys on the floor. And you know what? I wouldn’t change a thing.

If you asked a hundred people what home means to them, I bet you no one would tell you the same thing twice. Maybe home is just a feeling, but maybe, at the same time, it can also be very much a place. I have called this old craftsman my home for over half my life, and I cherish the memories made here and the memories we continue to make. I know this for sure: Home is personal, but at the same time it’s such a universal feeling that we all experience at some point in our lives, if we’re lucky.

And I am grateful to have returned back to my home, and that I get to share it with the people I love most in the world.