To me, there is one place I call home. I have spent most of my life at my current home in Indiana, but that is not where I have always lived. From when I was born till I was around the age of seven, I lived in a small town in New Mexico. Since I spent most of my adolescent years at this house, I do not remember everything during that time. I do remember certain things such as learning how to ride a bike, cooking marshmallows at my grandma’s house, and learning how to ride horses at an early age. Then there was the day that my parents informed my siblings and I that we were moving to Indiana. The first emotion that hit me was sadness, mainly because I was not ready to leave everything that I was accustomed to.

That emotion soon changed when I arrived at my new house. Going from a one story, two bedroom house to a three story, 5 bedroom house really changed my attitude about the move. We spent five years in that wonderful house, up until presidents day my 7th grade year. Having the day off of school, my mom gave me a list of things she wanted me to get done while her and my father went to work. The last thing on the list was to reorganize my room. At the time I shared a room with my younger brother, who made quiet the mess. So we started and got about half way done when I could not stand the smell of the room anymore and lit one of my scented candles. After completing everything but my closet I decided to throw in the towel, literally. When I left to go get lunch I remember throwing a towel onto my desk, which was not in its normal spot and it also had the candle on it. So after making chicken noodle soup and sitting down for about a minute, I heard the fire alarm go off. Never in my life have I connected a series of events so fast while being burnt by my soup. I instantly knew that the candle that I had lit, and the towel that I threw on my desk must have started a fire. I ran up stairs only to find a smoke covered room that was as black as night. The worst part was my little brother was asleep somewhere in this room. I ran in and scooped him off of his bed and told him to go and call 911 and to get my sister and the pets out of the house. At that time a wave of courage came over me and I grabbed two fire extinguishers and stepped into a room engulfed in flames. After putting out most of the fire I was on my way to grab a third fire extinguisher when a pipe exploded and a shard of copper went in and out of my arm. That was my cue to get out of there as soon as possible. As I was running out of my house the fire fighters were arriving. Over the next 2 hours I watched my house burn. There was no way that the house could be saved due to the fire, smoke, and water damage.

As a family we had a serious problem on our hand, we did not have a house. Luckily we have such good friends and one of them, a man named Greg, let us live in his guest house for the time being. After having many family discussions we decided that we were going to rebuild our house right where the old one stood. We stayed in our friend’s guest house for the next two years while my parents took the money they were saving to remodel the old house and the money that they got from insurance and built a beautiful house. Now it’s a huge joke between my family. They say that I burnt down the house so we could build a better one. Moving back into that house was like the first time that I moved from New Mexico to Indiana. I was ecstatic when I realized that I was going to have my own room. The first time walking through my new house I realized how lucky I was to call such a beautiful thing my home.

To this day I am still currently living in the one place that I call home. Even though I spend most of the year going to a boarding school, I still manage to spend some time at home. Home is a place where one feels at ease, is comfortable, and is in a stress free environment. I love spending time at home because it means so much to me.