The House At the Bottom of the Hill

I take this picture at least a few times every year. 

It's morning. Early. I pull out of my driveway, my mind solely focused on my daily trip to Dunkin Donuts for a caffeine hit before I start my commute to work. But then I glance to the right at my house, and I stop.

Since the day I moved into my house, I've have loved taking pictures of my house. Even  during those first few months when I wasn't particularly interested in living in the house, I still had pictures of it. In rain and snow, under sunshine and clouds, and in all seasons, I have stopped on my way to work and snapped away.

At first I took pictures because it was especially fascinating to me that, after eight years of renting Manhattan apartments with rooms literally the size of closets and tiny storage spaces that could only charitably be described as closets, I actually owned a house with appropriately sized rooms more than enough closet space to accommodate my needs. But after awhile, I started actually living in my house and stopped being fascinated by it. After awhile, it just became home.

It became the place where I woke up in the morning and the place I returned to at night. It because the place where we laughed and planned and made memories to fill the previously empty spaces. It became a safe place for wishes and dreams.

In short, it became home.

But I still take pictures. All the time.

They don't look much different from each other. The pictures, I mean. The picture I took on Friday morning after an unexpected snow is exactly the same as the one I took last January at the beginning of the first of many, many snowstorms we had last winter. The picture I took at the beginning of November features the same fall-colored leaves as the one I took at the beginning of November last year. 

But I like them, these pictures look alike. Because they remind me that even when everything around me is changing, my house still stands there, strong and sturdy and the same as it always was. For almost one hundred years my house has sat right on that lawn at the bottom of that hill and kept watch as my street changed with the times.

Things change so fast. Sometimes it seems like we are all hurtling through life at a breakneck pace, just trying to keep up with each other and with ourselves. And frankly, it can be flat out exhausting sometimes. So it's nice - and even comforting - to know that there are some things that don't change. That will always stay just as they are.

Like my house at the bottom of the hill, waiting to welcome me home.