Home Is Where the Heart Is

Home Is Where the Heart Is

       The day I woke up, I opened my eyes. Looking around, the ceiling, the color of walls and the bed were all unfamiliar to me. It took me almost five seconds to realize that I moved to a new place. And the sense of loss overwhelmed me. “This is not my home,” I thought. I wondered if it ever would.

       At that time, I was a senior student in high school. That was the time we prepared for college entrance examination. In China, the exam is a big deal. Twelve years of diligent work in one’s education career are all in preparation for that moment. The result of the exam can affect a person in a huge way. Many people perceive the exam as a way to change their life, or even their whole family’s life. A good university means a promising future--this is always proven to be true.

My home was not very far from school, but if my dad had no time to drive me to school or pick me up from school, it would take me about twenty minutes by walking. “You waste too much time on the road,” my mom would say anxiously, “you must be exhausted after walking that long.” I was totally fine with the situation. So when my parents finally decided to rent an apartment near my school, I was strongly opposed to the idea. However, given that my mom was already so sensitive and nervous, the last thing I wanted to do was argue with her.

       So, we moved into a small, shabby apartment. Also, it was expensive because apparently the apartment was badly wanted by other anxious parents. At first, I refused to call the new apartment “home.” I usually called it “the new apartment I live in temporarily.” I just couldn’t associate this shabby apartment with my sweet home. It had no comforts, no air conditioning. What it did have was a cold cement floor and a hard-to-use water heater. Every time I said goodbye to my friend I’d say, “I have to go back to the apartment my parents rented.”

Before we officially moved in, my mom had already bought or brought all essentials. But when we started our lives here, we constantly found we needed more spoons, another chair, or some coat hooks. We kept buying stuff and changing the arrangement of the furniture. About a month later, we were satisfied with the new apartment, for it finally looked kind of like a home. So I came to realize that the process of establishing a home is never simple. Family members should devote much time and effort to make a house a home.

       As time went by, I got used to life in the apartment.  I knew that if the water heater didn’t work, I just needed to click the restart button. And I almost fell in love with that hard mattress in my room. When I accepted everything in the apartment without reluctance, life became easier. The most important thing is, every time when I went home, my parents were sitting in the couch waiting for me, and dinner was ready--just like old times. We still sat together, enjoyed my mom’s specialty dishes--on a different table. We still watched movies together--in a different couch. But besides that, nothing had changed, and my family had never been absent for one minute.

After living in the apartment for a while, when my friends asked me where I was going,  I then simply told them “home.”