Tucked into my Heart

This morning, in the early hours, the home that in my childhood I knew of as,“Grandma and Grandpa’s house,”burned down. A piece of my heart broke at the revealing of this news. 

When my grandma relaid this happening to me she said, “As I watched the fire this morning, I remembered that you were born in that house.” An ache welled up in my heart. True, the home had been sold some years ago, but it was there, a visible monument of what once was. To think of it entirely gone brought on a different kind of grief. I think one’s birthplace, or the place they were brought home too, always holds a special spot in your heart. I think of it as the beginning of your identity, rooted there, deep in your soul. Therefore, I suppose it seems only necessary that when the physical reminder is gone you feel a piece of yourself lost as well. Slipped away with the rest of your childhood, becoming only a cherished memory you hold in the collection. 

In my childhood days, the little yellow house on the hill meant Grandma in the kitchen making me strawberries on waffles for breakfast, or whizzing up a carob smoothie in the evening. It meant togetherness - family meals, hymn singing, and puzzle building. It housed Grandmas voice, reading to me before bed, as the wind in the pines whistled about and the upstairs creaked. The little house greeted many hellos and waved equal goodbyes.

Now, it will live on only in my memory and those of my family. In my inner being, it will stand as one of the testaments to who I was, and to who I am. A cherished token that, one day, through the retelling of these special moments, I will pass onto my children. For its events like this that gratefully remind me that the deepest beauty of something is not all because of its physical existence, but the feeling or power that it represents. This quote I think encapsulates it. 

“But the most beautiful things in life are not just things. They’re people, and places, memories and pictures. They’re feelings and moments, smiles and laughter.”

Life can be changed in a moment, or it can continue on just as it is when all you really wish for is for it to change. Through it all, we are forever free to tuck away into our souls the things we wish to save, safe from destruction, unless by our own choice.