It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…I grew up on James Island, in Charleston, South Carolina. We moved there just before or just after my sixth birthday and sold the house when I was 22 years old. The house was a brick three bedroom, 2 bathroom home in an average middle class neighborhood that was only 2 blocks from the YMCA, which is now called the Youth Center or something like that. Back then I thought it was the best neighborhood ever, but as I grew older I began to understand it was just a normal neighborhood, it was the neighbors that made it special.
I knew most of my neighbors, at least on my street and a few streets over, by name. You could walk around the neighborhood at night without fear of being accosted, and the kids played outside until the street lights came on. My butt better be in my own front yard when those street lights came on or I was in big trouble.
One of the things about growing up in the south, especially a smaller place like James Island, is that everyone pretty much knows everyone else. It’s like growing up in a small town. (Insert Cheers theme song here: “Everybody knows your name…” )
Funny thing about growing up in the same place your whole childhood, for the most part, is that your neighbors, childhood friends, become like family to you. When Mr. Rockstar and I went to Charleston for our honeymoon, we went to James Island and I showed him the house I grew up in. I took the picture I’ve inserted. I can still tell you our phone number from back then and my street address. I told him stories from my childhood, about my friends and neighbors, about my family and described the house…When I was little the house seemed so much bigger. And in a way it was because I was so much smaller. Growing up our shutters and front door were painted dark brown, that large tree you see just beyond the mailbox we planted when I was around 8-9 years old. I could jump over it then.
When Mr. Rockstar first showed me our house I almost freaked because our small brick 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bathroom house is a lot like the house I grew up in. The living room in our home now is smaller, and there’s no laundry room, and master bedroom is smaller and doesn’t have a walk-in closet, but it’s so similar that I couldn’t help but cry. I felt like I’d come home. I know it’s different, and I realize to the naked eye it probably doesn’t look at all like the house I grew up in… especially this picture, but I grew up with the brown shutters blending in with the brick, and our roof was darker when I was young. 
I am waiting for the weather to turn cooler and then I’ll be painting our shutters dark red, I already painted the front door. And next year we’ll hopefully be able to replace the roof. There is a lot of work to do to our home, but the moment I saw it the house felt like home–the child inside me recognized the similarities even if the adult disagreed. You can’t see the rest of the left side of the house, it has two windows and we’ve cleaned off the porch and only the bench and a small black table remains on the porch. This spring we’re going to plant rose bushes below each window and some small flowers in front of the porch… I also want to make a walkway out of flat stones…
Home is where the heart is, so they say. My childhood was spent on James Island, in that home pictured at the top, and for many years after I left I didn’t feel at home anywhere else. Where ever I pitched my tent, so to speak, became my place, but none felt like home the way our small house does now. Home is home now because I am sharing it with someone who believes in me, who loves me unconditionally and accepts me. The closest I ever got to feeling at home before now was when my children and I lived on our own about 5 miles from my parents home in our own place. It was new and no one else had lived there and we made it home, but still something was missing deep inside me. I felt like I’d found my temporary home, but not my permanent one.
I grew up with the smell of marsh and ocean. I don’t have the marsh or the ocean, but I have found my permanent home. I’ve learned much since moving away from the Island. I’ve moved around a great deal since then, dragged my children from place to place, and myself from place to place, and the one thing I know for sure is that where ever you land and feel the safest, most comfortable, that makes you want to stay, where you want to make your mark–plant your garden I guess, that’s home. We’re remodeling, fixing up, and making our mark on our small home. By the time we’re done our home will have a new roof, a garage with a room above it, look completely different in a good way because it will be our mark we’ve put on it. It will look like a home instead of a house we just moved in. It’s already part way there.
Prompt for Writing 101
Burgess Taylor 