Home

I spent the past weekend back home visiting my mom.  The town's changed plenty in the years since I left.  Familiar houses and buildings have been replaced with vacant lots, new duplexes, and factory-built homes that lack the individuality and history of their two-story predecessors.  Vinyl siding and false-brick facades stare out at streets where big porches with gingerbread trim used to yawn at me.  I suppose it's progress.  After all, my hometown is a living community not a museum of decades past.

Sunday morning I took a long walk past the tennis court to the south end of town and circling back to north edge by the house where I grew up.  The town that confined me as a child seems so expansive now; its broad empty streets, relaxing rather than restricting.  Maybe the quiet refreshes me because I know I'll be leaving soon.  Despite its changes and my own, it's still home to me.  No other place holds me as it does.

Today write about home.  What is your concept of home?  Is home the house in which you live or a wider community?  Is a house a home, or is there a distinction?  You might describe a character's house room by room or concentrate on the details of a single room especially important to your character.  What is the home's mood?  Are there parts of the home your character avoids, and if so why?  How does your character feel about his/her home?