Home

I grew up all over the place. Eighteen different houses, thirteen different towns, six different “states” and two different countries are where I call home. From day one my life was an adventure; and only once did I hate moving. Packing and unpacking was my norm and it’s what made me unique. I have always loved being able to tell people how many different places I’ve lived. The only problem I have with it is the misconception school counselors and shrinks seem to hold over my head.


According to parenting books a good mom creates a stable environment for her children. Who said stable had to be boring? In the second grade we had to fill out a report on where we were born and were we had lived since then. Besides me only two people had ever lived in more than one place. In fact, one kid was even born on his kitchen floor thanks to his immense impatience. Now with that information one might think “wow, what memories that house must hold,” but memories are held in a person’s heart and head, not a structure. I grew up with just as many sad and happy moments as Mr. Never-Leave-Home, only my moments were probably much more interesting and filled with all sorts of different places and people.


Perhaps I’m being a little abrasive; there is nothing wrong with staying in one place. There was even a time I thought my mother and I might just settle down for good. It was five years after her divorce with my father and she was remarrying. The man who, at that time, was my soon to be stepdad was a lot like my mother in the fact that he had grown up in a small town. They decided that after the wedding we would move back to his roots, also known as Bonner Springs, Kansas. There we found a two-story house that was perfect: three bedrooms, two baths, a fireplace, great school system, neighborhood full of kids, and smack dab on the curve of a cul-de-sac. It was a piece of cliché paradise, and since everything I’d lived in before was either an apartment or townhouse it would be the first actual house I was ever going to be able to call my own. So that is exactly what I did.


Like an animal I claimed my territory with pink paint and Winnie the Pooh wallpaper, which two years later turned to turquoise paint and Scooby Doo paper, and then once again to purple leopard print. I befriended all the neighborhood kids and took place in silly miscreant acts and illegal pond swimming. I cracked my elbow on a neighbor’s deck, sprained my ankle in my garage, fought over everything with Holly from two houses down, kicked a hole in my bedroom wall after a fight with my mom, and was madly in love with the kid across the street. Life was perfectly imperfect in that house, and then we were moving again. This time to a place called Oregon.


This is that one move I wasn’t ready for. The one move I cried as we drove off in the cab of our U-Haul covered wagon embarking on a new sort of Oregon Trail. It took me a year to feel comfortable in the new and wet town of Wilsonville. However my feet eventually webbed, I made friends and went to high school. I started freshmen year at Wilsonville High, and graduated from Wilsonville High; quite an accomplishment for my family, a total of five years in one school district. Not that we stayed in the same house ofcourse. We went from Jamaica Street to Vlahos Drive and almost to Sunny Side Lane, which I am very grateful, did not happen.


Now that high school is over there was naturally to be another move for me, but I decided to live with my mom and stepdad for awhile longer at home. I have no problem saying that word because I believe in everything that stands behind it. I know that the next move I make will be the first one I do on my own. Despite my reservations on living by myself I know that I will at least have my memories. Even if they are slightly erratic and seemingly unstable, they are still mine and that’s what makes them ultimately my home. It’s true that home is where the heart is, and while I am saying that I might as well add that there is no place like it and it is doubly sweet.