It’s always interested me that a lot of kids who grew up around me had moved from house to house and town to town. While that’s not exactly the norm across America, many kids do end up living in more than one house while they progress through school. And oftentimes, this causes a change in schools. For me, though, I grew up in the same house in a small town. In fact, my parents built that house the year I was born and still live in it. I’ve always enjoyed going back to visit because it’s exactly as it always has been with nothing new, surprising, or different. In a way, it’s not just a return to home as in the physical location but home as I knew it when young. If anything, my parents have expanded their “home” because they bought the house and property directly next to their own house. For a few years, I lived in that second house and paid their bills. That’s now become home to me as well, especially since I lived in there alone for awhile. Really, I don’t separate the two houses since a span of about 100 feet of pasture separates the two. You can often find my dad in the shop next door (at “my” house) doing various projects for one of the two houses. Whether he’s shifting their storage by lugging around cheap moving boxes or building something out of wood, he’s always busy outside of work to better his property and homes. It’s a simple life that I sometimes crave for myself. Even though I’m very unlike my parents in that I want to travel the world throughout my life and even move away, I still yearn for the life they have once I hit my 50s. Being able to improve my home, relax in the shop, and enjoy the nice weather when it’s out just sounds like a paradise that no far-off vacation could give me. And I honestly think it’s inevitable that this sort of life will come to me in time. Right now, I’m content with living near the city, having fun at local bars riddled with other 25 to 35 year olds. But once I’m ready to settle down, a house in the outskirts of the city with plenty of land for building sounds exactly like the life I know I’ll have. It’s where I’m from, who I am, and what I never knew I wanted more than anything.
Perhaps you’ll catch me lugging around some old, cheap moving boxes just like my dad when I’m older. And those boxes will undoubtedly remind me of my younger days when I was always moving from one place to the next.
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