Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Sounds of Home

Once I moved to Georgia in the early 90's, I had my sight set on buying a home. It took until 1999 to make it happen, but I knew going-in that it would be a long road to get there. There were two sounds I associated with the haven of home: the sound of a screened door squeaking open and then slamming shut, and the sound of a bell calling a playing child home for dinner.

And so with my house, I purchased the cheapest screened door I could. One with no springs: it slams shut. And as a housewarming gift, a girlfriend got me this bell which hangs outside of our garage. I would ring it to call Harleigh if she was up the street playing. And often the ringing would follow with a Dad yelling "Harleigh, your mom is calling you home!" And hearing the slam of the screened door would mean the next thing I would see would be a dirty, happy smiling face, jabbering a mile a minute about the tree fort all the kids made or the cool way a wagon tied to the back of a bike made for a neat ride. These simple things are the payoff of all the hard work it took to make this house happen. Everyone should be so lucky to have this music playing in their home.

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