Home Matters

I stood at the end of the long, dirt driveway riddled with potholes, and mentally took in everything I could of the little house, the metal outbuilding, the sloping, grassy hill. None of it was particularly attractive, in fact, it didn’t look like it had been kept up very well over the years, but my heart was filled with so much emotion I could hardly hold it in. This had been home for seven years of my childhood— some of the best, most formidable ones in my opinion. I was 11 when we moved in, so I remember vivid details about everything from those years.

Eighteen years later, my husband, five children and I were visiting Texas from our home in Canada and I asked that we adjust our route slightly so I could show them my old home. I grinned as we turned off the rural highway onto the bumpy dirt road and my husband laughed and exclaimed “Wow!”

“I told you!” I said “I told you we lived in the middle of no where!”

I recalled memories as we rattled down the old county road, called out names of neighbours as we passed, and then we came around the corner and I asked him to slow down. There it was.

Home.

The house was the same colour my parents and siblings and I had painted it to sell; the giant metal star still hung on the wall facing the road, but the picket fence my dad had worked so hard to build was gone. Don’t tell my brother— he had spent hours of his boyhood painting that thing a crisp white, slat by slat. I got out and walked around the van to stand at the end of the driveway. I had walked barefoot down that long driveway to get the mail, my nose in a book, hundreds of times.

I looked up at the trees bowing over the dusty road that led to the dirty old creek. I’m 36 years old and mama of five, but it took everything in me not to call out “I’m back!! I came back! Do you remember me?! I remember you!”

It was just a place. Just a house. A driveway. Cow fields. A dirt road. What of it?

Memories flood my mind of the life I lived when that was my home— when that was my homeschool…

Sledding down the little hill when the weather was cold enough for the grass to freeze. Playing Wolf Over The River and Capture The Flag. Learning to sew, embroider, crochet, quilt. Writing poems and songs in the wooden desk my grandma gave me, dreaming of the day I’d one day write a book. Dressing up and playing Pilgrim’s Progress down the cow tracks through the woods, looking for the Celestial City. Milking goats. Feeding dogs, cats, rabbits, chickens. Building our own playhouse with old wood that Dad finally had to take down because it wasn’t safe. Roasting marshmallows by the fire. Trying our hand at gardening but letting it go because no one wanted to go out in the Texas heat to weed when summer came along. We got tons of tomatoes that year, but Mom was the only one who liked tomatoes back then. Making birthday cakes eleven times a year, and learning to cook meals for a growing family. Welcoming four new siblings over those seven years into our tiny house, into our already-full bedrooms, and arguing with Mom and Dad that we weren’t too crowded, we didn’t need to move, we really liked where we lived.

These were all memories and there were many more. But it was just a place. I’m an adult now and it it’s been 18 years since we packed the last box into the moving van and pulled away to our new home in Missouri, but here’s what I’ve learned as I’ve reflected on those few minutes I spent back at the home-place of my childhood.

Home matters.

Memories shape us.

Family— while it’s not “everything” as some would have us believe— makes us who we are.

Childhood experiences form our worldview.

And these days we are in right now, Mama?

These actual, literal days we live with our children— are the childhood memories they will carry with them forever. The happy days of reading books, being bored in the sunshine wondering what their future will hold, riding bikes, eating lunch at the table together, creating crafts, whining about doing chores, learning new skills, fishing in the pond or playing Playmobil half the day— these things create the memory lanes our daughters will travel down as 36-year-old sentimental mamas who catch their breath and push through lumps in their throat for all the sweet beauty and sadness of days long gone. These become the stories our sons tell their grandkids as they sit on back porches drinking iced tea years after we’ve passed on.

What we do matters, mamas.

The life we offer our children, our choice to give them something more than the status quo, our desire to teach them more than academics in our homeschools; this matters.

And it doesn’t all rest on how good we are at making school fun, offering amazing activities, keeping a perfect house or whether or not we always kept a consistent routine. I can tell you I don’t rightly remember the state of the house I grew up in, but I see from pictures there was more often a little mess than perfection. But we were happy. We were loved. We had each other, books, nature, chores, fun. We had belly laughs, lots of them. We had Jesus— my parents read us the Bible, taught us His ways, drove us 45 minutes to a good church, got together with good friends, prayed with us daily.

It really matters, mamas. What we are doing is important and will be remembered.

Take heart. Don’t give up. Keep going.

Childhood matters. Home matters.