Pondering with a Purpose

This Week's prompt is: Home?
Webster defines home as home  (hm)

n.

1. A place where one lives; a residence.

2. The physical structure within which one lives, such as a house or apartment.

3. A dwelling place together with the family or social unit that occupies it; a household.

4.

a. An environment offering security and happiness.

b. A valued place regarded as a refuge or place of origin.

5. The place, such as a country or town, where one was born or has lived for a long period.

I have lived in many place, many structures, most of them I considered houses.  I wasn't emotionally attached to them.  There was my college dorm, various apartments in Denver, houses we lived in throughout the United States.  Thinking back there were only three that I considered homes.

The first was my childhood home on the North Fork of the Shoshone River, west of Cody, Wyoming.  It was a comfortable, log house filled with love and laughter, pain and tears.  Here I learned the values that would shape me for the rest of my life.  It was an environment filled with security and happiness.

The second place I considered a home, was the apartment in Jouy-sur-Eure, France where I started my married life, where my first child was born.  It was a small run-down apartment, with uneven floors, covered with cracked linoleum, a small kitchenette, cupboards with no doors, rooms all connected with no doors, an open shower in the corner of the bedroom, the toilet in the outside hall used by all the tenants.  It was heated with a kerosene stove,

the chimney going outside through a pane in the living room window.  But it was in this place that I learned of love, the joy of motherhood, the heartbreak of losing my father, and the wonderful advantages and opportunities that I had stateside.

The final place that I consider as home is the house in Phoenix where I now live.  This place is solid--a refuge from the cares of the world.  In it I have experienced the joy of seeing my children grow up and become responsible adults, but I have also experienced the loss of my husband through divorce, a hurt that hung like a cloud over this dwelling for several years. Then this building saw my metamorphosis from a hurting depressed individual to a successful business person, well adjusted and happy.

So, looking back, I have concluded that it is not the dwelling that makes a place home for me, but the emotional ties those bricks and boards, windows and doors provide.