“Welcome home”, they said. “Welcome to your new home.” Welcome to your paint peeling, walls withering, boiler breaking, creeper crawling, windows whistling, roof rumbling home. Isn’t it nice? Stay awhile.

It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t nice, and that was certain, but even if it had been, say, a palace, it would have seemed like the most uncongenial establishment I’d ever had the poor fortune to land myself in. The decrepit nature of the ramshackle blue house was enough to ward me off, but that wasn’t what gave me the creeping, sour feeling in the pit of my stomach. This house wasn’t mine, regardless of whose family name was on the lease. Undoubtedly, it wasn’t my home. It never would be.

I know, they say that home is where the heart is, and all my life I’ve been told how lucky I am to be under the roof of a family who loves me, feeds me, and helps me grow. But my family and I don’t belong here. It’s as if the walls whisper foreign words as I pass by them, while I walk into the kitchen where the pots and pans clink in a menacing way, just to open a refrigerator with an unfamiliar hum, only to sit at the small wooden table that’s too high off the ground for my nine year-old torso, too low for my father’s staggering six foot four figure, feeling completely, utterly, out of place.

I pick up on my mother’s sideways glances shot at my father, not meant to be intercepted by my prying young eyes, when the washing machine breaks and the fridge starts to leak. Every drop of freezer burned liquid was like a little bit of patience draining from my father’s tired eyes. My family feels what I feel, and I know they do because soon we’ve left the blue house. We still own it, and although I still can’t accept that it belongs to us, it’s changing. I peek back in every once and a while to watch the men with hammers knocking down the whispering walls, the cabinets that held the menacing pots and pans, shipping out the refrigerator with the unfamiliar hum, and moving out all of the furniture that just didn’t seem to fit. They were changing the blue house. They reached inside of it, and with a strong fist, they wrenched its innards out and heaved them into the hulking metal dumpster that crept into my driveway and rested there, a dormant iron beast, until November of 2008.

Just like that, the blue house turned into the green house, with freshly painted walls that were ready to absorb the words of our own language, with crisp cherry cabinets that held our pots and pans at peace, with a refrigerator that gave off a friendly, inviting buzz and always seemed to have something delectable in it, and a table that was magically the perfect height for both my father and I. The house was beautiful, with sparkling pine floors, a new deck overlooking a sleek green lawn, and an open staircase that we would gleefully tumble down come Christmas morning. It was beautiful, fresh, and it had come out of our own imagination.

My parents, as I would later look back on the blueprints and realize, had designed this house with nothing but the bare skeleton of the exterior walls to work with and pure creativity. We were the first human beings to take residence in what seemed like my own little castle, and I loved it. This wonderland belonged to our family, and in it, we came together and thrived, working together like gears turning in a clock. This was what allowed me to look in on the green house and know that I was finally home.