Home ...

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That picture above is where I spent my formative years, I want to say from the age of four (maybe five) to the age of nineteen. It's the place I still think of when someone mentions "home." Odd, as I've lived in my current location far longer, over twenty three years as a matter of fact. But that house (I won't say which one) is where my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins would come to visit on Christmas Day. (For Thanksgiving it was often just the grandparents, both sets.)

I lived in the same small Vermont town from birth to enlisting in the Air Force in 1975. The neighborhood in the next picture is where I lived when I was nobbut a wee bairn. It's on the lot occupied by the two story house in the photo, where the apartment building where my parents lived used to be located. It burned down not long after we moved to a bigger place. (The hospital where I was born burned down, the first place I lived burned down. Hhmm, I'm seeing a pattern there ...)

Oddly enough, I had an apartment in that very building, me and two buddies shared the upstairs of that house in the picture. (No, it didn't burn down after I left ...)

Update: Actually, I think the apartment building we lived in was on the lot where the yellow house in the foreground is now. Hey, I was a baby and it was a long time ago.

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When I was a toddler we lived in the house in the next photo, our landlady lived in the little annex, we had the rest of the house. The only memory I have of that place was that there was no heat upstairs. In the winter one would get up, quickly as I recall, then hustle downstairs to the kitchen, where it was warm. My Dad had one funny story of my toddler days.

It seems that I was, for some reason known only to myself, beating on a door in the upstairs hallway with my hand. You can imagine the annoyance this would create among the parental units. So my Dad, came upstairs and admonished me, "Stop that, come on, use your head."

Moments later the pounding on the door recommenced. Dad wearily went back upstairs to convince me of the error of my ways and there I was ...

Yup, beating my head on the door. 

Good times.

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When I was four (maybe five) my parents bought a house, the one where I would grow up. (Age-wise, there are solid arguments that could be made as to whether or not I have grown up, or ever will!) My parents like to tell me of the gasp issuing from my maternal grandfather at the cost of this new domicile.

"Fifteen thousand dollars?!?! You'll be living in the streets a year from now. You don't have that kind of money!"

Well, apparently they did and we didn't wind up in the streets a year later. But the price tag seemed huge at the time. (In terms of today's dollars, that's roughly $164,000, about what I paid for my house 23 years ago.)

My oldest kid brother, The Olde Vermonter, still lives in the ancestral home (as I call it). He was renting it from my parents after my Dad was moved by his company down to Connecticut. When they moved back to the ancestral lands (Connecticut River valley between Springfield and Charlestown), my Mom wanted to live near her Mom, my grandmother, so my brother bought the house. Dad had no objections, where she was living  was a "senior community" (55 and older) with some really nice amenities. Of course, that all changed after they'd been living there for a couple of years.

The old owners sold out and the new owners turned it into just another trailer park. Kinda sad, I know my Dad was pissed about it. (But as my brothers and I liked to say, "Dad was always pissed off about something." This time he had good reason.)

At any rate, my Dad passed back in 2010, Mom still lives in the place they bought when my grandmother was still alive. It's where we visit now on holidays, when we're not visiting the kids.

With two kids (and their families) out in California, and the third in Maryland, we do travel more than some grandparents. All things being equal, we wind up in Maryland, a lot. It's closer than California, it's cheaper to get there than California. Don't think that the grandkids out west don't notice that, they do. But they understand the whys, if not the distances involved.

But I feel at home at my kids' homes, I feel at home at my Mom's home, and, of course, in my own home.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that home is where you can show up and they let you in, no questions asked, other than maybe, "So, are you hungry?" (And you get fed.) They don't have to let you in, but they do.

That's all I've got today, it's been a strange week.