Young Writers Project is an independent nonprofit that engages Vermont and New Hampshire students to write, helps them improve and connects them with authentic audiences in newspapers, before live audiences and on websites, including youngwritersproject.org, vtdigger.org, vpr.net, Medium and cowbird.com. Young Writers Project also publishes a digital magazine, The Voice. YWP is supported by this newspaper and foundations, businesses and individuals who recognize the power and value of writing.
This week’s prompt: Home. Where do you feel most at home, most confident, most strong, most you?
… My backyard is the place where I love to play, dream, read. I can climb a steep rock, slide on sleds, plant flowers and see how they grow. It is far from being a model for the Better Homes and Gardens magazine, but it is the safest and most beautiful place where my imagination has no boundaries, where I grow, where I love to be.
Oddly enough, the place I feel most at home in this cataclysmic world of ours is one thousand miles from small-town Bradford, Vt. It takes sixteen hours, five states, and about six bathroom stops to get there. My other home, far away from my real home, sits in a pretty average neighborhood in Louisville, Ky.
This average house in Louisville belongs to my grandmother and grandfather and is also the home in which my mom grew up, nearly fifty years ago. Thus, we take the journey down every summer, allowing us to celebrate the Fourth of July with our extended family, something we cherish doing….
Read the complete story at http://youngwritersproject.org/node/12180
I feel most confident, most strong, most comfortable, most me on the basketball court. I feel like the basketball court is my home. When I make a mistake in basketball, I feel like I can learn from it and move on. When I make a mistake anywhere else, except for at my house, I feel like people will judge me. At basketball, I can be different. I don’t need to fit in. I can stand out. I can be me, Madison Powers.
My home is never in one set place. It is constantly moving, place to place. It can be in the same place twice, but it never stops moving. It can range from the tedious days of school to the delightful car rides with the music at full volume, from the late nights doing homework to the late nights lying down and watching shooting stars in the bed of a truck, from playing a not so thrilling game of cards to playing the best game of cards, even if I don’t know the rules.
Home isn’t a specific place. Home is when you are where you want to be. Home is when you’re with the people you want to be with, even if it’s no people at all. For me, home is when I am with my friends doing whatever we feel like doing. I could sit in a car and just talk; I could walk around town; I could go to basketball games and watch. Even if the team I was cheering for lost, I would still feel home. I would BE home because I was with my friends.