Where we love is home -- home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.
Upstairs, downstairs, inside, outside, upside down. I counted them up -- the duplexes, apartments, little houses, big houses, brand new and turn-of-the-century houses -- the places I've lived. Dorm rooms were excluded because no matter how crowded, they are never cozy like home.
The house where my family lived when I was born, the third daughter of an eventual four, I was too little to remember while we lived there, but Tim and I drove around Lima and found it a couple years ago.
For the past 14 years, the farm has been home -- by far the longest period I've lived in one place. The closest second was the house on Vine Street where we lived for six years and welcomed the two youngest girls into our family. That was a wonderful neighborhood and it was difficult to say goodbye.
Although we lived in new homes, nicer homes, the house on Vine Street has always been the two older girls' favorite place. Our youngest only remembers the blue house we lived in before we moved to the farm.
When we leave the farm next week, I will be making a new home for the 22nd time. It sounds as if I was an Army brat, moving so much. But no, just life and job transfers mostly, were responsible for what sounds, but never felt like, a gypsy life.
I've always said I can make a nest anywhere and it's true. Maybe my penchant for hanging curtains at windows and stuff on the walls is why I can close one door for the last time and open another for the first.
While enjoying certain aspects of where one lives is important for happiness, the real contentment comes when night falls and we know our family is safe.
The only place that never felt like home was a little hut we rented while waiting for construction to be completed on our only new house. The two older girls immediately christened it the "Bat House" for the active colony of flying mammals living directly behind the attic door in their bedroom. The little creatures squeaked and fluttered at all hours, day and night, which sent the girls squealing down the steps more than once.
The farmhouse used to feel as if our family was bursting out every window and door. Yet in the span of a few years, it has begun to echo. The table is too big for two or three people. Suddenly, the lawn stretches endlessly and time grows shorter.
Our interests have changed from wanting everyone to come home, to us wanting to go visit the kids. We want to travel more without being weighed down with the responsibility and never-ending demands of this acreage. We look forward to the limited upkeep of a small, town lot. We need to be closer to aging parents. Perhaps we'll even manage to attend a concert or two of the Schomburg Series.
Will I miss this old farm? Yes and no. Yes, I'll miss the screened porch in summer and the animals in the barn on frosty mornings. No, I won't miss cleaning the place; I'm ready for a smaller home.
We will always treasure our time on the farm. We have had some memorable celebrations: graduation parties, a barn dance and a wonderful wedding rehearsal dinner with sparklers and bluegrass music. However, just like every other place we've lived, heartache found us here, too. We have experienced worry, heartache and the shock of sudden grief, not once but twice.
I will miss the sense of discovery each day brings -- spring birdsong, spectacular sunsets, the starry skies of bitterly clear January nights and the insect chorus of sultry summer evenings. We will miss our animals, but they are living in good places where we can go visit.
What will I write about now? I will just wait and see what comes.
Other things may change us, but we start and end with the family.
Anthony Brandt