Home.

Home. Home is where you want to be when you feel like crap. Remember when you were a kid? When you'd get sick and stay home from school. You felt the whole world going on about its business outside your bedroom window. But on the other side of that window, the inside life was different for that day. If for no one else but you and your mother the day was different. Your fever, your cough, your ear ache or whatever it was rewrote the script for you two that day. Remember that feeling of the way your momma brushed your hair over your ears, wiped your tears, whispered I am so sorry. Then you'd look up seeing in her eyes she was holding back tears too, seeing in her eyes she truly wished she could take it away. Even the soup momma brought me when I was sick tasted different. These are all feelings of home for me. Home will always be your mommas hug, your momma's looks when you are hurting. Doesn't matter if your two, ten, or almost thirty. Doesn't matter if she's the mother that gave birth to you, or helped raise you. You know it when you hug her. You know it when she puts her fingers through your hair. When she gives you that look before she kisses your forehead, and now that you've had your own babies you know says "where did the time go?" and as she backs away you feel her heart plead with yours to just "slow down". Those are all feelings I crave when I am hurting, in pain, or just plain sad. The house I grew up in has a different phone number, different people and probably a little girl sleeping in my old bedroom. There were different dogs in the yard the last time I rode by. The new people cut down the big tree in the front yard. The one I had my first kiss under. The front porch steps are the same. I used to paint my toenails on those steps. I cried many times on those steps not understanding life and fearing I never would. That house, that home, made me who I am. Every day, every memory, every dream, every lesson I learned under that roof shaped me to be the woman I am today, the mother I am, the sister I am, the friend I am. It taught me so much. So much I wouldn't even be able to comprehend for years. So much I am still unraveling even today. Sometimes when I feel like I do right now I just wish I could walk through it, hear that old squeak in the hall near the furnace, or hear the furnace fire up one last time, slam the door to my old bedroom again. I foolishly feel sometimes like a strong dose of home will just make it all better. I think I will just walk up to the door and the humidity will be there on the storm door telling me that maw-maw's just pulled the cornbread out of the oven and that dinners on the stove and there is a little tea left but a fresh pot on the back eye of the stove to pour up if its too sweet or I need more...Momma will be there waiting to play with my hair until the pain is defeated by her comforting touch and I finally fall asleep. Sometimes you just want your momma and home even if you are almost thirty and have an address all of your own. Even if she's got a new one too.