It took a freeway....

So, last night I took my children to see the place where I grew up. My childhood home is a place that we began building when I was 10 years old. I remember my parents drawing plans on graph paper on the coffee table of our tiny little tract home. This was to be their "dream home". A place where they could raise their family of 6 children and teach them all the values and skills they knew they would need to be happy in this life and in the next. I remember spending FHE's digging trenches for the footings, and then mom spreading a blanket out on the ground where our dining room would be and we would eat dinner before the last of the sunlight faded away. Over 30 years were spent in that house. Many memories are associated with it. I remember Christmases where dad was the biggest scrooge and then I remember the Christmas when he turned into Santa Claus and so he is, to this day. I remember family talent shows and singing our hearts out or playing our instruments on the stage that was the landing to the stairs to great applause...and laughter. I remember sleeping on the floor in the summer in front of the swamp cooler before the air conditioner was installed. I remember water fights, both inside and outside. I remember football games, volleyball, planting the garden, raising the chickens and turkeys, the giant fig trees that only dad would eat from, our dogs and cats, the treehouse, jumping off the roof into the sand pile, sitting on the roof to watch the fireworks, and many other pleasant memories. I remember kissing my husband there for the first time and hoping mom and dad weren't spying from the upper window on the stairs. Many family gatherings were held there, we celebrated birthdays, anniversaries, grandchildren's births, and the heartache of goodbyes too.
That house survived storms including a micro-burst, 6 children, several extra children over the years, many many of my brother's friends, a couple of desert fires said brothers and friends set, a giant canal that narrowly missed our property, and monsoon storms that would set my brothers tubing down the washes. It took a freeway to destroy what we built over 35 years ago. But even a freeway can't destroy everything we built in that house. It was a house. A place where life was allowed to happen. Where relationships were created, strengthened and love flowed freely. It's walls kept all that in for us. But, it wasn't the cause of it all. I am grateful for that house for giving me my childhood memories and for holding safe the love of our family and tolerating our imperfections so well. But it is my parents and my siblings that I am most grateful for. For the time we spent together, for the lessons we taught each other. For the support we still are to each other. My parents have a new house to call home and it seems we have just transferred all the things we built so carefully in our old home, to the new with so much ease, that I realize just how much difference there is between house and home. A house is a place, a home is a condition. So, we played last night on the spot where my house and once home stood. The house is gone, yet the home remains and will forever if we keep doing what we have always done. Love each other and pass that heritage on to our children and grandchildren.