Home is……..

a place where special memories are made.

What is home for you? Is it where you live now? Or is where you grew up always the place that pulls at your heart strings and deserves the title of home? Home for me is more about the feeling and people around me than a particular building but much of that is because my current home is the one I’ve never really settled into and knew my marriage was on the rocks the day we moved in so now it feels like a pawn in the game of divorce.

My childhood home in North London – Harrow has the fondest memories for me and I still feel my roots are there despite many friends leaving and moving away, as well as myself and my family. My mum though still resides on the estate where I grew up and when I visit I feel comfortable and just a sense of “home”. My mum lives opposite the primary school I went to and the community centre I frequented weekly at “kids club”. Will it still feel like home, when my mum is no longer there? I don’t know. The area has changed, the people have changed, the community is more disjointed but my memories of a fabulous childhood remain. Outdoor summers, manhunt and British Bulldog, the ice cream van and coming home when it started to get dark. It was a childhood that felt free and full, which I’m thankful that I experienced before the advent of social media, mobile phones and all that goes along with it.

My childhood home I can remember in detail. The decor, fireplace that I would sit in front of with my sister and melt our chocolate digestives, leaving chocolate marks on the bars. The toilet downstairs that I would be so scared to use in the middle of the night. I’d come down, flush and run like crazy so the boogie man didn’t get me! Neighbours knocking on the door to borrow 50ps to put in the electric meter daily, everyone helping each other out and knowing who lived in every house on the estate. Community was important. Life was simple. Am I romanticising my memories? Do I have rose tinted spectacles on when I describe life growing up and my home on the estate in Harrow? Maybe. I’m sure there were a lot of hardships too but as a child I don’t recall them. I had no real worries and isn’t that what your childhood memories should be? So I guess I’m blessed.

The bungalow we live in now needs a lot of work but more significantly there has been a lot of heartache here. That has tarred my memories and probably how I feel about the years we have spent here. When the time comes to sell and move into a home of my own I’m sure I’ll feel a sense of excitement as well as trepidation at doing that alone. The excitement is tangible though and I look forward to making a home for myself and my kids that works for us and that is looked after and welcoming for family and friends because for me that’s what makes the memories and happy times and turns those four walls from a house into a “home”. As much as we can love a building and pour some of ourselves into the decoration and upkeep, a home is the memories made by the people within it, that is what I believe and what is imprinted on my memories so fondly from my childhood. It isn’t the “things” we had in our house or how great it looked, its the time and experiences with my family and friends that made it special.