Member-only story
What Makes a House a Home?
If this is where we eat, laugh, fight, sleep, then why doesn’t it feel like home?
My family and I have lived with my grandparents for eleven years. I share a room with my two sisters, and my parents share one with my brother.
This is the house where we eat, laugh, fight, sleep, and do everything one typically does in a home. Only it doesn’t matter that the closet is filled with my clothes, that our room is decorated to our liking, or that I watch the television downstairs.
This house is not my home.
I’ve heard my grandma utter the words this is your home several times, and yet, I’ve never considered it one. I’ve always thought of this house as a long stop before catching the next train to our home.
When someone asks me where I live, I don’t just tell them where. I tell them I live with my grandparent’s.
It doesn’t matter that the cabinets in the kitchen are filled with our food, that the upstairs bathroom is ours, or that our mail arrives here.
This house is not our home.
Which begs the question, what makes a house a home?
People always say it’s the people that make a house a home.
