While growing up, you don't have the perspective you do when you are older. Home is just your house. You don't think too much of it. Of course there are always times, especially in the teen years, you don't want to go home. Your home feels like it is suffocating you. You feel like no one listens or cares. That's normal. The thing is, if your parents did a good job, you know that it is a place to which you can always return. No matter how bad things got, I knew that I could always go back.
My parents have lived in the same house my entire life, so I have no experience with a house not feeling like mine, but, I believe that when my parents move, their new house will also still feel like my home. The only difference may be that I may actually start calling it their house instead of mine. Yes, that's right, I still call my childhood house mine. It's not about the building itself. It's about the feeling. Reading this article this morning really made me think. My parents did every one of these things without knowing they did them. Am I also doing these? Am I making our house a home for our children? When they grow up, will our house still be their home even when they have houses of their own? I really hope so. I want my kids to get the same feeling when they walk in our front door, whether it be this particular house or another one, that I still get when I walk into my parents' house. It's a feeling that's hard to describe. The closest I can come is comfort. When I walk in my parents' front door, there is that smell. It's nothing anyone else would understand about their home when they walked in, but it just smells like home: fun and laughter, welcome, values, nurturing, refuge, connection, and love.