Once I had a white 2 story house with 5 cats, 1 dog, 1 geicko, and 1 abusive husband. I loved that house, more then the inhabitants in it. I had lived their since I was 7. It was a red room with yellow trim that I wrote song quotes on and my friends signed the wall. It was a queen sized mattress I carried with me throughout adulthood, lost my virginity on, and made 2 of my children on. It was a basement that scared me for years, and I always ran up the steps. It was a patchwork sectional my biological mom od’d on and I found her. It was where my friends and I partied after my parents moved out and bought their new house. It was chair Olympics, shot gunning cans of Bud light, riding mattresses down the stairs, and light saber fights at 2 am. It was always waking up, never knowing who you’d find on the futon across the hall.
Then I lived with Jonathan Kent, in many places I wont call home. We had one dog, and a step child. I developed a love for cinnamon flavored whiskey. It was a 3 bedroom singlewide we enthusiastically put a crib together in when I was only 10 weeks pregnant with Starfire. It was a room with one blue wall, I couldn’t walk into for months. It was a bathtub with glass sliding doors I had to get in to give our first Mastiff a bath. It was a kitchen, on Valentines day, I told him I wanted a divorce for the first time. It was St. Patrick’s Day where I finally found out I was pregnant with Batman, and we became a family, and it became home.
We then moved into my parents house, right before finding out I was pregnant with Robin… Still one dog. This was evening rides on the mower for a baby Batman, learning to pick dandelions up from the yard, and collecting buckeyes in the fall. Its a fire in the fireplace when Ohio State beats Michigan. Its waking up to the smell of Maxwell House, and knowing that the people who love me most are just downstairs. ITs walking into 56 acres of land and knowing I am home, this is mine, and where Im meant to be.
Then we moved into another singlewide. Jonathan Kent, the boys and I. We had 1 dog and 1 cat. It was home. It was at home in any house Ive ever been home in. We were a family, in every sense of the word. There was tension, but we still had the mattress from my childhood. I was happily breastfeeding and sober. I was a stay at home mom and loved it. We had mud puddles in the back yard, and we would meet Jonathan Kent for lunch.
Then my Dad got sick. And I began sleeping on the hardwood floor beside their bed, or outside the bathroom door. Depending on where he was. I spent more nights at my parents then I did at home. When he passed, I knew the envitable was that Id move in with my mother. I never dreaded, only welcomed it, still yearning for the fires and dandelions. We didn’t bring the mattress…
We moved in with her in Feb 2017. In a short period of time she was admitted to the hospital. And home became a mixture of itchy blankets and McDonalds. Trying to keep up with parents night. Did Jonathan Kent remember what lunchable went into whose lunchbox? Was the biopsy scheduled for this morning or this afternoon? Home became a kalonopin infused faze of doctors and teachers and pills to give at this time, shots at that time. My home, the actual structure, became a hospital like zone with tubes and oxygen and everything I needed to allow my Mom to die at home.
Only I couldn’t. I had found my biological mother od’d. I had held my fathers hand at hes died. How was I suppose to watch this women who had raised me, who had taught me be who I was, watch her wither away and lose her senses? I tried. I tried so hard. I stayed up for days with her, getting everything she wanted, in this house they had so lovingly picked out together. But she got too combative and pulled out the tubes and refused the shots, the pills. So I hugged her, I told her I loved her, and I allowed her to go to hospice. She had a peaceful passing with me there. I still have all her clothes and blankets bundled up in a bag no one will ever touch.
Home is now these four walls my parents picked out with me in mind. A sound safe basement for tornadoes, a fireplace when the electric goes out, with a generator in the shed. A barn, to store whatever may need storing. 56 acres for the boys to roam and run and be feral. And love. It has all their love in. It’s in the hallway my Mom had redone before passed and the new kitchen floor she put down so I wouldn’t have to worry with it. It’s the gas stove that is missing one knob because it needs fixed.Its the hundreds of tools and gadgets in the shed and basement that I don’t know what are for. Its a bed with their covers and pillows on it, that I can still imagine them both laying in, while I cleaned them and took care of them.
My home is 2 little boys who I love with my whole heart, who kept me going when I want to give up. Its laughter and fortnight and fights over whose opinion is stupid. Its 2 dogs and 1 crazy cat, and about 100 fish. Its a small zoo we’ve built and love. Its a man I adore, who I want more than anything to build a life with and bless us with more children. Its a smell of smoke that wafts in whenever he walks in a room, and the chomping of Doritos as Batman finishes off a bag.
The house that built me, they are many. They are rooms, with colors and smells, memories attached to them. They are structures Ill never in a million years be able to part with. They are me.
