A house is made with walls and beams, a home is built on love and dreams.

As a little girl I moved a lot. We moved to Arkansas when I was in sixth grade.  803 N. Gutensohn is the first place where I started to understand what home meant.  I can still remember walking in the front door, right into the dining room that was never used for dining but for collecting anything we could shed, before heading either left into our bedrooms (mine was the last one in the narrow hallway) or straight through into the dining area/ kitchen/ family room area.  You could tell someone’s mood by which direction they went.  Home meant something, it meant permanence.  It meant that no matter how bad it got between the human beings that stayed there, they were obligated to work it out because we shared a HOME.

Home is something I cherish.  I cherish it not because it is a place, but because it is so much more than that.  Home has weight, it has permanence, it has obligation.  Through all the moves we made, I knew we would probably move again.  Even on Gutensohn, we didn't own that home, so we never really made it our own.  But I lived there, I grew there, I fell in love with a boy and out of love with a boy, I failed at a lot of stuff, I stood up for what I believed in for the first time, I changed and challenged and grew there.  

My first “owned” home, was the home I bought with my husband.  We fought so hard to be able to buy a home and spent the first money we had on creating our son’s bedroom.  It was the most important room in the house.  We changed everything in the house.  I still love that place.  My son was six months old when we bought the house.  He was a fifth grader when we left.  My daughter was merely a dream when we bought that house.  It was our home.  I learned more about myself, accomplished so much, and understood that home is more than obligation, it is having the ability to craft your own story-in your own space; in your own time.

When I leave my school each day, I have a ten minute drive home.  As soon as I pull into my neighborhood, I can see my house at the end of the street.  My family picked the house plans, the land, and we built our home.  I have so many memories of building our home.  One of my favorite memories of building our home was that when they came to lay the foundation my husband, my children and I drove out to the property and buried treasures and wishes in the foundation.  Each one of us picked something dear to help create the foundation of our dream home.  We wrote messages on the studs and boards that live underneath the walls the keep us safe and connected.  My home smells like sunshine and sugar (because I burn a lot of candles to give the illusion of baking, and after all these years I refuse to have window coverings over the beautiful, plentiful windows that allow my still wild yard to be the art that I decorate with).  No matter what happens during my day, no matter if my family and I are fighting or things did not go my way, I always feel a sense of relief and gratitude when I pull into my driveway.  I love home.

This Friday night, my high school will play its first ever home game.  We have been in existence for ten years, and have just now gotten a football field.  Our football team, spirit squads, bands and students have excelled at a home that was really a little bit away.  They have behaved with dignity and grace because home is not a piece of property.  They had home in their hearts, home because they were crafting their stories in the classrooms, hallways, gymnasiums, the rotunda and performing arts center.  Those people that came throughs those halls knew, every day, that someone cared about them, felt obligated to them (whether they liked them that day or not).  I have known, each morning, when I pull into my parking spot, that someone in this building will ask me a question or challenge me or offer me the opportunity to change and grow. I know each day we are crafting our story.  I know that I will receive a hug from someone I love, and I know that if I am happy someone will laugh with me, and if I am sad, someone will cry with me.  Har-Ber High School is my home.  I can’t wait for Friday, not just for the stadium, but because it is the manifestation of a dream, a place to craft a new story, the physical affirmation of HOME.  I am beside myself because so many alumni are coming back--my kids, who have earned the right to celebrate seeing a place that they helped become a home for me, change and grow and prosper.  I will always bleed blue, and I will always cherish HOME.