My Home

This posting is a little different from the type I normally post. This week my students took their state exams (part 1) and to help them review I gave them daily topics to write one. One of the topics asked students to describe their ideal living place. In an effort to "model good behavior" and all that jazz they teach you in teacher's college, I wrote with them. I read it to my students and they liked it. One of them even suggested that I publish it. So that is what I'm doing. Enjoy!

My ideal living place

The smell of chocolate-chip cookies fresh from the oven warms the air. Lemon scented towels, fresh from the dryer, adorn the bathrooms. My daddy's favorite cologne appeases my nose. These scents all remind me of my ideal living place: home.

Located in Detroit, MI, what makes my home ideal is not the five bedrooms; it is not my grandmother's china and silver; it is not my Aunt Julie's hand blown glass. What makes my home ideas are the people, the memories, the good times, the laughter and even the tears. It is not the living room couch. It is the memory of sitting on that couch, five-years-old with my grandma Evvie, or dozing like a cat on that couch, waking up with Crys curled up right next to me. It is not the bedroom with a solid mahogany bed. It is jumping on that bed (and always breaking it) with my favorite cousin Stan and hiding behind a plush chair while he brought me crayons and snacks and hearing him tell my Aunt Julie "I don't know where Miah is. We weren't jumping on the bed." knowing that if she caught me, my tail was hers. (He never told). It is not the new oven and stove. It is November of 2004 when the old one, caked with grease and grime from years of fried chicken,pork chops, chicken-and-dumplins, liver-and-onions, hand rolled biscuits, pound cakes, and whatever other tasty goodies my grandmother, my mother and my aunt Linda concocted, finally broke down and we ate Chicken Alfredo for Thanksgiving dinner instead of the traditional turkey, dressing, candied yams, macaroni-and-cheese, honey glazed ham and gravy and laughted at our (mis)fortune. It is not crying when my Uncle Larry finally surrendering to death. It is all the times (and there were many) that he made me laugh so hard streams of tears ran down my face.

My ideal place is lived in. The wood floors creak are worn down by the heavy workboots my granddaddy wore in and the three-inch heels I rocked when I went out. The stairs creak when they are walked on--tell tale signs of someone tiptoeing in the house well past midnight. The washing maching leaks buckets of water whenever it is used from hundreds of countless loads.

My home is ideal because my home is me. I grew up in that home with my sister and my cousins. We were reare by moms and dads, aunts and uncles, grandma and granddad. This is my ideal living place: My Home

*M*