by Michael S. Romano

Created on: September 08, 2009   Last Updated: September 09, 2009

Is it the paint and sheet rock? Maybe it's the fancy Italian marble in the kitchen. Perhaps it is the high end entertainment system in your family room or the pool in the back yard. Maybe you grew up in a modest middle class home and didn't have all the expensive toys growing up like some of the more privileged people did, and you only had a vinyl kitchen floor with mismatched dishes. Does this make your house any more or less a home than the well to do? No. So what make a house a home?

A house starts out as a simple building one would live in, void of any emotions, worries, or cares. A house to me is a place where you would eat your meals, maybe catch some shut eye, and even do the three "S's". This is not a home. If that's the case you can call your car a house, if need be.

What transforms a simple house to a comfy home are a few bare necessities. The home is a place to which you can come to after a hard days work and be greeted by loved ones. A place to kick off your shoes and relax in the comfort created by the invisible cushion of your families love and affection.

A home does not start at the front door and end at the back, but encompasses any locale you share with friends and family. Friday nights at the dining room table every one gathers around a warm home cooked meal, and maybe a movie or board game in the family room. Saturdays in a house can be sharing yard work in the fall by raking leaves into mountainous piles and watching the kiddies taking diving leaps into them, just so dad can rake them all up again. It's road a trip in the family car on Sundays to visit grandma' and grandpa'.

The house is a place that's cold and lonely as you sit and stare blankly at the pale white walls, so quite you can still hear the antique paint still drying. The home becomes a house when your wife and child leave you, never to have her curling up to you on a cold winters night. The once comforting dream of coming home from working all night and being greeted at the front door by those two smiling faces has been replace by the nightmare that is an old man sitting on the steps, who speaks to you in a foreign tongue. Crying alone at night and having no one to wipe away the tears of pain and sorrow as you reflect on the distant memory of your new family home that vanished like a flash in a pan. A memory that quickly dims like a dieing light bulb. For you know that one day it will simply burn its self out and never, never return.

In a home you have people who care and will

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