The Staircase in the Woods

by Chuck Wendig

A house, at first, is not a home. At the start, a house is just a house: It is a structure designed for the purpose of someone to live in it. Perhaps you! You move in. You bring your things—all your most precious stuff. You pack into this place your whole life—and that effect is multiplicative. Life makes life, a fungal efflorescence of existence begetting existence. You bring in a spouse, you have more children, you get one pet, another pet, a dog and a cat and now a bearded dragon; it’s where you learn to cook and fill the house with wonderful smells; it’s where you rest your head and give birth to dreams that are ambitious and strange. And it is in all this that a house becomes a home: You imprint yourself upon it, and it imprints itself upon you in return. It becomes a part of your very identity—your house, your home, is part of the tapestry that is you. You carry it with you, in your heart, to the end of things. That, of course, is where the saying comes from: Home is where the heart is.