New Home
Beach House – Ariana Kish
New Home
Michai Sanders
The walls of your old home mean more to you than just paint and decorations. These walls hold your childhood memories along with laughter and the traces of the life you created inside them. Homes are meant to be filled with a lot of laughter, love, and memories that become a part of you. When you pour so much into something you love, it’s hard to let go and move on. Moving doesn’t just mean a new home; it means leaving behind everything familiar to you, whether that means the roads you know by heart to the way the doors creek inside every time you open them. How would you tell your friends you are leaving? How do you start over? A home you have stayed in ever since you were born is now being sold to another family.
If another family buys this house, would they know what all it meant to you?As the days go by, you constantly think about the decision your parents made. A new home has an array of emotions all mixed together in your mind. You can’t really tell if you are sad because of your negative fears or if you are happy because you have a nicer home. You are reminded that a home doesn’t necessarily have to be nice in order for your memories to be cherished forever. Your new home is bigger, cleaner, and unfamiliar. This home has space for new memories, but they aren’t yours just yet. It doesn’t smell like your home, nor does it sound like it, not yet.
If you aren’t able to call this new home memorable when you are old enough to move out on your own, that then makes you consider, Why move into a new home anyway? A week before moving, you sit on your bedroom floor, looking through old photos. Each photo is a time capsule: your birthday party, your cousin’s sleepover, and the moment when you first held Travis in your arms. Running your fingers over the edges of each photograph helps trace the past. The smell of cake from your eighth birthday party still lingers in
your mind—the sound of distant laughter interconnected with each picture. These aren’t just regular pictures; they are proof this home was yours. You also can’t forget the crown you wore to your 8th birthday party that your parents got you.
The birthday crown is more than glitter and plastic in your eyes; it’s a piece of history. Leaving it behind is like leaving behind a part of yourself, just like the house taking a piece of you with it. The crown you have is treated as a symbol of good luck. You wore it that day, and you got a dog, your dream birthday cake, an iPhone, and the best surprise of all tickets to see Taylor Swift. You see the crown and think to yourself; you put the crown on your head for a slight moment. Does the crown still hold its magic? Maybe luck is not about where you are currently, but what about all you bring with you.