Hearth Fires

Houses have feelings. I believe that as much as I believe that calling a place home doesn't always make it feel like home. Places like people either accept you or reject you from the start, welcoming you in or making you feel uncomfortable enough to make you want to leave sooner rather than later.

I have lived, if sometimes you could call it living, in both of these places... Homes I've left that I've had no desire to leave and those I've ran from as if I couldn't flee fast enough from the hounds of hell. Uprooting time and time again searching for something a little more permanent, someplace to stay just a little bit longer, a home to call mine and mine alone.

I sit in my reading room typing away this morning in quiet while my daughter, the dogs and even the cats remain fast asleep. Around me there are empty boxes waiting to be packed, labeled and put by the door in their readiness to go. But I think to myself that it's not quite real yet, this leaving. And it just may be that I won't believe that some other house is going to be my home until I'm crossing its threshold with that first box of whatever magic it is inside that helps to make a house a home.

I dread the thought of taking my pictures down from their walls, rolling the carpets up to carry them down the stairs, and emptying each room until the only part left of me to leave behind is the color I chose to paint them. Golden yellow, coffee and cream, oatmeal with a cinnamon raisin accent wall, sage green for comfort and for KC bright hues of celeron greens and turquoise blues.

This apartment has been a blessing. From the moment I first saw it, I saw past all of the problems both big and small. To me it was like a fairy tale castle high above and away from the rest of the world, safe from the dragons below. I hid here until I learned how to live here and the living has been good.

I am not the woman I was when I landed here with broken wings and broken spirit. And I have learned to let go of the lesson that I was so cruelly and needlessly taught, forced to endure rather than live. The fear I used to feel, the tears I used to cry, the feeling of always needing to look over my shoulder to make sure that no one was there, all of that is gone...

A good home does that for you.

Rebuilding as it repairs.

Protecting as it provides.