“Home is where the heart is.”
Truer words were never spoken.
“Home is where the heart is.” Just take it from me.
I was kicked out to the streets and forced to live in a Grand Prix until that too was taken from me. But for nights I would allow the Ghost of Christmas past to fill my mind of times I never finished in first and sat next to the fire. Here in my car, I’m never in dead last but as the chill hits me I wrap closer to my heat. This year my holiday fire is a car lighter. No need for sheets when your bed is the back seat and I found, due to lack of space from what I was able to acquire, the front seats recline making for a Sandman’s sleep.
The underneath of a bridge served as good company and granted me a pleasant roof from the winds that were trying their best to break me. Screaming the names that I so often heard from under a different ceiling, in different words, but with the same out-come and meaning, and painfully understood until that too was another forgotten address when I was politely addressed to leave by the kind policeman.
I bounced around from place to place. I slept here, crashed there. My bed… a family member’s chair, the carpet, both bathroom and kitchen floors, once a closet, and on a rare occasion it was a couch with sunken cushions belonging to a friend.
The occupants of these locations became my community, helped to form my identity, and were very much my new family, one that I won’t forget and would trade for nothing. I came from a family that we would talk but seldom listen. Argue and fight mostly in that familiar silence. There, with the alpha male putting his foot down and raising his hardly missed fist. The absent female remaining aloof and the loud, obnoxious off-spring making fun of you.
I found a family that at times I should have felt in danger for everyone had their own agenda but I was surprised to find that each of them looked after me just as I would for her or him.
Here, I shared a room with my family , just as I did before of people I grew to loved but they were still strangers. Here, my neighbors and roommates were addicted to drugs. Cocaine parties were hosted by ruined nasal passages. I look down and more dirty syringes but through the danger here I was safe with my family of friends. For months and weeks this is how I lived until my presence was replaced by a reputation and someone with better connections, and I can’t say that I blame them, so then my bed became a park bench. I spent thoughtful nights with my family the stars and I learned some valuable lessons but bare no scars.
The bench is great to rest upon after a long walk or jog in the park but the nights became too much and were too hard. I went to the community center. It’s alarming how quickly I began to understand the frank distinction between luxuries and necessities. At the center I am greeted with my new family of helpers serving as a new shelter, with the unfamiliar surroundings and I was granted something eat, some water, a shower, and a place to sleep. It was truly amazing for that one evening. But this house was just as temporary when they became over populated with problems just as before, in that different shell. Both were infected with disease in the nature and disguise of disobedience and unjust laws. I felt the need of a new audience and bowed out gracefully choosing to take my leave.
I begged, found, and scrounged up enough to afford buss fair and I started further on my unplanned adventure. Two states and four cities later a dark alley served as my dream’s companion, pillow, blanket, and bed. I only wish I had had a protector in t he end for the Big Bad Wolf snarled his teeth, ripped my clothes, laid claws into me, leaving me blooded, wishing for something, and thinking I had nothing. When I opened my eyes I could clearly see that I had all I could ever need.
Home.
It’s not about where you eat, where you sleep, the place to stash your clothes, the place to keep your things. It’s what you bring to the table. It’s the larger portions of love that sings with personality. It’s the second helpings of character and kindness, followed closely with the home-made dessert of insight.
A house isn’t a home. A home is four walls of stability forged of years of perseverance. Huff and you puff with all your might and it won’t make a difference. Home is a roof of ideas to shield you and never condemn you. No glass ceilings here.
People live in a house. Bodies dwell in a building or whatever scenery but family of all variety and the sense of self are a home.
I built my home brick by brick, one at a time. Only my tools weren’t just my hands, they were also my experiences and my walls are not stone, rather persistence.
Through all this mentioned, I always knew myself. I had my family, I filled my belly, I survived and served as my own four walls of enclosure, giving me a chance at exposure and a roof of pride made so secure. I lived, I laughed, and I dined in pure bliss because…
“Home is where the heart is.” |