Where the Heart Is

My friend just recently posted about home.

As in, Where is home? What is home? 

So I thought I would write a little on the subject, just because it's interesting, and I know y'all are all nosy, so you don't mind a little story.

I was born (as Kimberly Marie Loveless) in Powder Springs, Georgia. Well, actually that's just where the house was. 

I lived on Harmony Road until I was in third grade, then moved to Lovingwood Trail.

I lived there until I was 18, when I moved to North Carolina for college.

I shortly moved back to Lovingwood, then to Douglasville.

3 years later, I moved to Albany, where we are living now.

So there's the outline, now  I want to tell you about each place.

the Harmony Road house was a cute little house with a big fenced in yard, a separate garage out back, and a playground my Dad built. We also had inflatable pools, trampoline, and go karts and four wheelers on and off while we lived there.

What I remember most about my time there are a few incidents.

1. it was sort of off the main roads, so I was allowed to play in the street, as long as i stayed between each of our neighbors mailboxes. One time when my babysitters (one of whom still works for my parents today) told me to stay close, I rode my bike like half a mile away and forgot to go back. They came and found me like 30 minutes later but I got in HUGE trouble.

2. One time I had my birthday party in the back yard. We had a pool that year, and my little friend Brian (we called him Brick for some reason) got in the pool in his clothes and didn't have a change. He ended up getting so cold he turned purple, so my mom dressed him in my clothes, including little girl panties.  I don't know why I remember that, but I bet his mother remembers it too!

3. Our neighbor was a slightly-older-than-my-parents black lady who had two kids--Kia and Jeremy. They were a few years older than me but they always included me. Their mom, Linda used to yell at our dog, Tinker for making so much noise. She'd come outside and things like "shut up you tigga foo".

That's definitely the first place in life that I called home. It makes me sad to drive by that house now and reminisce. But leaving that house led to a new chapter in my life (and my parents'!).

So a few weeks into 3rd grade we moved to a much larger, much nicer house.

I had to change schools, which was hard, but not so hard that I hated it. 

I made friends pretty quick, but looking back now I realize what a weirdo I was...don't believe me? (actually you probably do believe me) Well, let me just tell you this: I had a bowl cut, wore boy shorts with knee high socks, and my voice is pretty deep like the boys' (considering I was among pre-pubescent boys). Yeah. 

Anyway, this new house had 4 acres of woods, a huge front yard, and a tennis court.

Eventually my dad built a fourwheeler track, including bridge and tunnel, a jump on the tennis court, and a super steep hill climb. Then he built a giant garage on the tennis court.

Then he built a pool.

And then a garden.

Anyway, in the time that we lived in that house, I made a lot of memories.

• My best friend through elementary/middle school, Rachel, who lived next door. We made movies together, swam every summer for hours and hours, played pranks, made afterschool snacks like hotdog-potato chip-pickle-ketcup sandwiches. YuM!
• put in more hours on four wheelers and go karts than you can imagine. One time I watched my sister take her little tiny fourwheeler up the hill climb and chicken out about half way up. Right in front of me, she flipped backwards down the hill 3 times! I almost had a heart attack.
• learned to cook and spent many nights with my mom in the kitchen making creations. We had lots of parties and get togethers  at that house. That's relaly where I would like to call home, at least in the sense of "going back home" to my parents, but they've recently moved to a new house, which is bittersweet. Their new house is beautiful and perfect for them.

Next I moved away to college. Nothing about that was home to me. I basically hated it. Especially because I was 7 hours from Scott and we were engaged to be married. Thankfully, I quickly moved back home to my parents' house, got married, and moved in with Scott in the house he purchased a few months earlier.

As much as I would love to say that house in Douglasville is home, I never really got to make the house into a home. Now that I have the girlies and I realize how blessed we were, I hope to someday move back to that house and really make it ours.

We lived there for 3 years, while both of us were sort of in and out of jobs and/or school, trying to decide what to do with our lives.

Finally, Scott got a police job in Albany and we had about 3 weeks to find a place to live, get our house rented out, and move to Albany.

So here we are today in the 2 bed/1 bath apartment.

I might say in conversation "i have to go home" in reference to the apartment, but it's definitely been a temporary thing from day 1.

All of this to say that what really makes a home is love, familiar comforts, and memories.

You know, home is where the heart is.

 I'm at home when me and my mom cook a meal together, or work the garden for a few hours.

I'm at home when Scott and I take the girls outside to play in the grass, or sit down together for dinner and a movie.

I'm home when I hold my girls, read my favorite book, and especially when we sit around and go through old pictures.

Where is your home? What makes it home?

It's something we don't really think about, but is so incredibly important.