Feeling of Home

Home is a place where I feel welcome, loved, and appreciated. When I get home from dance, I open the door and smell the warmth of food being cooked in the background, as hands rush forwards to greet me. Home is gentle, like a sleeping cat. I hear excitement as people enter the house. There's a bustle as my mom walks around the corner with a ladle in her hand, pausing from her work to give me a hug. She wraps her hands around me so tightly, but not tight enough to get food on my clothes! In contrast, picture this. As you walk back from school, frost nips at your hair, your face buried in a linen scarf while you are blinded by the rain pouring down. The sky swirls into a blueish gray. When you manage to open the door…utter silence. No footsteps, no laughter. No parents coming to ask how your day was or to tell you to set the table - just a voice in your head echoing down the empty corridor. Loneliness. Instead, when I arrive home from GEMS, mom asks my brother, sister and I to set the table. We carefully make trips up and down the small corridor to where the table is. Now, to wait, as the food is being hauled out of the kitchen to the table. We can't wait to know what's under the pot lids! Will it be pasta? Rice and beans? Or curry? We pray, and the feast begins. We lick our plates clean, then mourn about cleanup. But we get the job done, eventually. Then, a game or two. A nail biter. Next, I beg for a movie. “No.” I jump into bed and we read a story. Then, we say goodnight and it’s dreamland time. Home safe.