Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home

Home Sweet Home 

In the cool city of Anchorage, Alaska, on McRae Rd housed five mobile homes, one with strong green siding, another with mint trim, and three others of beige. The largest of the five homes (located between the tiny beige homes) is a particular home, the home of one young lady’s infancy to early childhood.  

As you drive up to the house in beige siding and brown trim, you can see hundreds of flowers in and outside, German chamomiles, Pansies, Tulips, and many more. The owner of the house has a bit of a green thumb. As you knock on the door, you can hear a voice say, ‘I’m coming!” with a wheezing cough. The person on the other side yanks the jammed door open, and you meet a stubby woman in her early to mid-40s, the owner of the house. 

She invites you in with a warm smile and hugs you with a kiss on the cheek; she asks you all of the usual questions as she ushers you, how are you? How was work? Are you hungry? As she continues with her lineup of questions, your surroundings hit you. You scan your eyes over the green carpet, the vinyl kitchen floors, and the orangish wood walls making way to the back of the house. 

As you plop down on the worn-out couch, your eyes meet the yellow-brownish walls and curtains that look like they may have been white at some point in time. You can hear the woman behind you stirring something that smells spicy; however, an overpowering smell of Marlboro Menthol cigarettes turns your attention to the old collapsible round table. At that table sits a little girl water-coloring a monkey on top of the world. The woman praises the little one, ‘That looks wonderful, Sweet pea.’ The girl smiles while hopping off the chair and running to the backroom to play with the older woman’s collection of porcelain dolls. You and the older woman talk for what seems like hours. You have one last meal with her, and then you bid farewell. Not to her but the house, no, the home she has made here. 

~

“Sweet pea?” a frail voice said from behind me; I told her I was okay because I was. That place may have been home, but the only reason it was, was because she made it that way. So, no matter where she may go, it will always be home. A place where my memories live and a place where new ones will grow. She is my home sweet home.