Home
If I could live anywhere I wanted?
I guess it would have to be my Nana's house, up on Sleeping Bear Dunes, the only place I've ever really called home. Big old Victorian place, couple of acres of land close to the water. For the longest time, it was home to the whole family, well apart from my Dad, I suppose. I don't mean we all lived there, not permanently, but wherever we lived at the time, whenever we drove out there, I always got the same feeling of returning home. That feeling of being warm and safe, like being wrapped up in one long happy sigh.
Whenever things got too much at home for Mom, she would bundle me and Sara and Monty (Mom's Chihuahua) into the car, and drive us all out there. Nana would herd us all into the kitchen when we arrived like a bunch of refugees, and fill us full of freshly baked cookies and milk. It would take a couple of days, maybe a week, before Dad arrived to persuade her to go back and we always made the most of not having to go to school for a few days, running wild in the woods and out on the waterfront.
After she and Dad divorced, me and Sara spent our summers with Nana. She gave me my first guitar, and paid for piano lessons, which my Mom couldn't afford with only one wage coming in and my Dad had declared would be a waste of money. Even after I started work, I would hitch up there at weekends. I wrote some of my best stuff sitting out on the porch those warm summer evenings.
Nowhere else has ever felt like that for me. Guess that's why I took to life on the road, because I always knew that home would be waiting for me whenever I needed it. Course, nothing lasts forever.
House is all closed up now. After she died, I couldn't go back, not knowing she would never be there again to welcome me home with a hug and whatever she had just baked. My Mom doesn't want to sell it, but can't live there either. Too far out. Maybe next time I visit her, I'll take a trip up, stay for a while. And just maybe find that feeling of home again.
I guess it would have to be my Nana's house, up on Sleeping Bear Dunes, the only place I've ever really called home. Big old Victorian place, couple of acres of land close to the water. For the longest time, it was home to the whole family, well apart from my Dad, I suppose. I don't mean we all lived there, not permanently, but wherever we lived at the time, whenever we drove out there, I always got the same feeling of returning home. That feeling of being warm and safe, like being wrapped up in one long happy sigh.
Whenever things got too much at home for Mom, she would bundle me and Sara and Monty (Mom's Chihuahua) into the car, and drive us all out there. Nana would herd us all into the kitchen when we arrived like a bunch of refugees, and fill us full of freshly baked cookies and milk. It would take a couple of days, maybe a week, before Dad arrived to persuade her to go back and we always made the most of not having to go to school for a few days, running wild in the woods and out on the waterfront.
After she and Dad divorced, me and Sara spent our summers with Nana. She gave me my first guitar, and paid for piano lessons, which my Mom couldn't afford with only one wage coming in and my Dad had declared would be a waste of money. Even after I started work, I would hitch up there at weekends. I wrote some of my best stuff sitting out on the porch those warm summer evenings.
Nowhere else has ever felt like that for me. Guess that's why I took to life on the road, because I always knew that home would be waiting for me whenever I needed it. Course, nothing lasts forever.
House is all closed up now. After she died, I couldn't go back, not knowing she would never be there again to welcome me home with a hug and whatever she had just baked. My Mom doesn't want to sell it, but can't live there either. Too far out. Maybe next time I visit her, I'll take a trip up, stay for a while. And just maybe find that feeling of home again.