Write a short story (600 – 1000 words) that describes your sense of home; write about the values and the stories that you use to connect yourself to, and to identify your sense of home.

If I were to describe what home is for me in one word it would probably be laughter. This may seem odd yet I feel as though this was something that was heard in my home continuously as I grew up. The defintion of home according to the dicitonary is “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household(English Oxford Living Dictionary).” I grew up on a sort of hobby farm in southern Ontario although in my world I know that I have many places I can call home this particular place will forever be special in my mind. With its rolling hills and it’s imperfect old farm house it was for me the ideal place to grow up.  I know that home is different for everyone and even my own definition of home as changed in the past year. I identify with the idea that home is wherever your family is. I was raised with core values like hard work, the importance of family, and the knowledge that I was loved no matter what.  The stories that connect me to myself and to my home are often the memories of long days of work helping my Dad either plant tree’s or cut down trees for firewood. The memories feel faint yet a story that connects me to home would be time spent with our golden retrievers espeically when our dog beau had puppies. My obsession was real and every spare moment was spent with the puppies.  Objects that connect me to home are the real fireplace, my dogs a golden retriever and a Bernese mountain dog. I identify home with the smell of wood smoke and the cuddling of kittens near the hearth. It boils down to though the sound of my family’s voices and the late night chats my sister. While I don’t plan on living at home for a while and homesickness is a disease I have had to conquer and I relize we all have to move on at one point I will forever carry a bit of home with me.  There is joy for me as well in returning and while I needed to make the choice to move on for my own personal journey there will be a beautiful place that I will forever be able to visit. A good home to me is one where values and love are instilled into children from the earliest age. I feel like then there is a foundation for the child to go off of when they reach the real world. Home is a place where we can be vulnerable and real and somewhere where we can feel protected and safe. At the end of the day it does not matter in my opinion what your background is as long as love is instilled and a place to be vulnerable is created. I think, however, this is modeled is not as important as the fact that it does happen. Home while different for everyone is a important aspect to who we are as people and how to relate to the world around us.

Works Cited

“Home – Definition of Home in English | Oxford Dictionaries.” Oxford Dictionaries.    AccessedOctober 18, 2016. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/home.