Houses And Homes

Noah Zinsmeister Photography

A house....a home....I've got them on the brain in a big way these days. Why they're important and what it is that turns brick and concrete and wood into a space that feels like "home" and why these spaces mean so much to us.

The timing is almost eerie. My husband and I are looking for our first house to buy--and while that may not happen, and we may just rent, we're looking and hoping and trying to determine if this is the right path for us to take. Meanwhile, my parents have just sold my childhood home in Upstate New York. While we play the role of the buyer my parents have been playing the role of the seller, and it's made for some interesting perspective.

I'm glad that I've had this very apt distraction while my parents' home is changing hands. It's sort of poetic actually. I know that I haven't lived in my childhood home in 7 years, and that my husband and I made a home of our own 2 years ago. But this house I grew up in was home, it was familiar in a way I haven't really had since. I always felt so proud of it and loyal to it. I'll always treasure this photo my brother snapped on the morning of my wedding. Me, on the most important day in all of my 23 years, heading to my parents' room to look at myself in their full length mirror right after getting dressed, in a hallway I traipsed through thousands of times over many years. This photo juxtaposes "once-in-a-lifetime" with normal, familiar, known.

And now, my husband and I are searching for precisely this. Our first home. It may not be in the cards just yet. A rental is still a home and we'll fill whatever place we end up in with our things and our particular scents and our love and struggles and joy. It's ok if we have to wait.

Either way, I know we have a lot to look forward to. If it's in 2 months or in 5 years, someday we will have the opportunity to make a home, a home, for ourselves and for our children, just as my parents made one for us.