Musical chairs: home edition

As a kid, I couldn’t sit still. 

The nature of stillness made me feel that time accelerated the less I moved— as if motion dictated time. 

The first home I remember was my grandmother’s house on the northside of Jacksonville around the corner from Sally B. Mathis. Ma and I were there with some of my aunts– I think. The big box TV swallowed the living room as Young and The Restless reruns ran while Grandma Shirley cooked. Eggs, rice, and bacon. No veggies unless it was onions.  My siblings, cousins, and I circulated between the yard and backroom to play the game. 

Growing up, I didn’t identify with the places we lived in whenever we moved. No place ever felt like a destination. Just a pit stop. The only house we lived in was one of the worst neighborhoods on the Westside. Once you walked out of the front door, to the left was a bando, and to the right was a trap house (as far as I knew, it looked questionable and dangerous).

Though I moved in with my grandparents shortly after, I remember when we moved to that one apartment on the southside— the one where we got bed bugs and had to strip at the door before we walked inside. 

We are still on the southside but in a different part and in our own home. I don’t have a desire to buy a home at the moment. I haven’t exactly found a city or town that fully matches my lifestyle, however, when I do, I’m almost positive that I won’t be there often anyway.