"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love. "

♥ Goethe 

Do you think houses remember? Do you think the love and joy and laughter they experience gets stored up and somehow permeates the walls and becomes such a part of the very house itself that when you walk into a room you can sense it?

We as people certainly remember houses. I remember, fondly, the house I grew up in. And since moving out and moving away I would sometimes find myself homesick for it. Or rather, I'd find myself desperate to recreate the feelings and emotions triggered by my happy memories there. And this sensation was never stronger than when I was pregnant with my daughter. And sick beyond sick.

Now, at certain times, when I walk through a room in our new house and the sunlight hits the gleaming hardwood floor just right or I walk barefoot in the cool damp of our basement  or the smell of supper cooking drifts through an open kitchen window and mingles with the dewy evening air and the sound of Elli playing in the yard I feel like I've come back to the house I grew up in. Indeed, like I never left.

I think I've been looking for that sensation for almost 7 years now. Subconsciously. Without ever even knowing it. Without ever even knowing how important it was to me to someday find it. But it wasn't until walking into this house, 1187 Columbus Circle, miles and miles away from where I grew up, that I realized it. Then I sensed the decades of love and joy and laughter stored up in it's walls. And felt the search and the journey and the homesickness end.