That’s me on the bottom right. Thank goodness high-water pants haven’t made a comeback.

Home is where your story begins.

My story began in a modest red house on a quiet corner in a small town. But nothing stays the same for long, and when my little sister arrived a couple years later, that quiet corner became considerably less quiet.

And so it goes.

Many years (and even more plot twists) later, I left that modest red house with its white garage and its yard full of trees behind me as I ventured out into the world. Eventually, I decided that I wanted to go back to that little red house on the corner, but it was too late. I was too grown up.

Maybe you can’t go home again, but you can always take it with you.

You can’t go home again.

So I made my own home. Several times over, in fact. And while I think it’s true that you can’t go home again, that’s only because I believe that home is something we carry with us wherever we go. Home is in our memories. Home is in the way we look at the world. Home is the way we treat others.

Home is a state of mind, a way of being, a feeling that can’t be taken away.

When I think of home, I think of the warmth of my grandma’s kitchen. I think of the hustle and bustle that went into family get-togethers. I remember the after-dinner tea and cookies, and how all of those things came together the morning after my second wedding as we all congregated in the kitchen of my new home.

Home is family. Home is friends.

Tadpole and Bubbles like to get up to all sorts of shenanigans.

Home is where your heart is.

It may be a sappy cliché, but that’s only because it’s true. Home is where your heart is because, without heart, there can be no home.

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