You Can Go Home Again

Going back to the Elk Mound house makes me sad. The rooms are empty, and voices echo with no furniture or people to absorb them. (Yes, I talk out loud to myself!) The rooms are still bright and sunny, and everywhere I look I see memories of twelve happy years there, along with about a million Asian beetle carcasses!!
I stand in the dining room--my favorite spot-- and look out at the back yard, missing the birds that I fed all those years. I'd sit at the table writing one of hundreds of letters to family, friends, and soldiers, able to see the birds and the Boys in back, and Kimo and Kaya through the living room window in the front. The driveway we got stuck in numerous times, where I backed Katie's car into a tree. and the girls shot baskets. The deck that Fred built, so shady and breezy in the summer with its beautiful view down the valley, where we fed and tamed generation after generation of stray cats. The apple tree that gave us so much wonderful applesauce and desserts...the spot under the birdfeeder where the bear lay last summer...the hillside where two litters of puppies romped, and Erica played the tuba, assuming that everyone living on the hill wanted to listen.
I see the place in the hallway where the girls' homecoming, prom, graduation, and other "special occasion" pictures were taken--empty now. Even though we had the carpets cleaned, the spot is still visible in the family room where Erica dumped a plate of lasagna. I can visualize Squirt's aquarium in the corner of her room, the place where he noislessly earned the title of Least Troublesome Andrist Pet. Katie's room is actually clean now, with its lavender walls that she helped paint and the shower curtain drapes--but no "Kato's Room-Stay Out!" sign on the door anymore.
The huge basement is full of memories, even though we didn't use it as a living space. Katie put on a "concert" down there once, giving each of us handwritten invitations. We turned it into a spook-house one Halloween, and the girls spent many hot summer nights sleeping on the fold-out couch that Dan and Trina left there. Fred built me my "shelf-room" where I kept my holiday decorations, my Country Treasures stash, and hid the Christmas presents and Easter baskets. The back room housed the Harley through the winters...Kaya gave birth to seven puppies in one corner, and Kimo died there last spring.
When I leave, I drive down the road that we walked hundreds of times, with and without the dogs. I see the spot where our sunflower mailbox used to sit....and I head back to Rhinelander, which is home now. Back to Fred, the cats and dogs, the sunflower mailbox, the familiar things that made the Elk Mound house home, and now make our home on Silver Lake Road. I know that "home" isn't a structure, it's where the people and things that you love reside.

"There's no place like home." -- Dorothy Gale