Oooof. Buckle in for a tearjerker: Family. Nostalgia. Memories. Your first bedroom you remember growing up in. The bedroom you left when you went to college. The unmowed part of lawn on the side of the driveway where you parked your first car. The chair on that one specific side of the table you always ate your dinner at. The part of the living room floor you’d prop a pillow up next to the worn leather couch to watched TGIF every. single. week. With popcorn your dad popped form one of those swirly heated poppers, not the burnt microwave bullshit. The pullout in the basement with the busted mattress where you spent sleepovers with your grammar school bestie watching your first rated-R horror movie, and subsequently turning it off at that time where the cat in Pet Sematary was /definitely/ going to claw someone’s throat. The over-sized dining room table you’d sit at in awe with your parents friends and feel like an adult because they’d consider letting you play cards or Trivial Pursuit despite the fact that you were 8. That one tree in that one corner of your backyard that was the greatest and most strategic fort in the history of all human civilization. That birthday that you finally felt you weren’t really a kid but still wanted a cake with candles to blow out. The first paycheck you got for busing tables which felt like back breaking effort even though it was for a grand total of 14 hours in a week’s time. Papa watching Cubs day games. Christmas mornings measuring up boxes wishing for anything other than clothes. Saying thank you when you got nothing but clothes from Kohls from your Grandma. Thank you Grandma. The carpeted floor in your bedroom where you collapsed into tears after striking out in every at-bat in your little league all-star game. The mailbox that received your college acceptance letter, and the fridge that displayed it with pride for the years following. The laughter. The tears. The frustration. The fighting and yelling followed by irreconcilable silence but knowing that love was right on the other side of that master bedroom door.

Whenever you pass through a doorframe, you’re leaving something and starting something else.

Then it becomes someone else’s door. You may not want it, you may fear what walking through that doorframe for the last time means, but it means you’re growing. You don’t leave anything behind. You take it all with you. You take every last memory. The heart of the house isn’t a thing, rather it’s you. It’s in you. You take it and imprint it on your children, your loved ones, and your friends. The heart of the home is within you, and you get to make of it however best you feel.