All The Things I Miss Most About Home

Today, I'm writing about all the things I miss about my little home town in Oregon. Things that I always think about but rarely talk about out loud. The town is just a little dot along the dry and rolling edges of the pacific northwest, but it's one of my favorite little dots in the whole world.

If you are also from Eastern Oregon, maybe you can find some familiarity and common ground in this post. Odds are, we both share some very similar memories.

And if you're not from Oregon or even the U.S., then maybe this post can transport you to my little American home town, and just for a second you can see where I come from.

Hard to explain

When people ask me during casual conversation, what I miss most about home, my answer is usually something along the lines of "Oh, you know, I miss everything. Mostly my family and friends." And that usually is enough to satisfy the inquirer.

But I never feel satisfied. I know that such a simple response doesn't even scratch the surface of all of things I miss about home. So why not explain everything in detail then and there?

The problem is, that when I'm having a face to face conversation with someone, my brain suddenly starts to operate like an old Windows desktop computer. It freezes up and is super slow in loading any actual valuable information. Thanks social anxiety!

And if the conversation is in Italian, it is literally IMPOSSIBLE for me to actually open up and have any deep conversations, because I'm just not able to explain in such detail or depth in Italian yet. I can usually understand when someone tells me something deep and conceptual in Italian, but I really struggle to reply. So this makes social life more challenging than you might think.

Memories come at night

If you are anything like me, then you too know that all your great ideas and deep thoughts tend to come to you at night when your pointlessly trying to get your brain to shut the hell up and fall asleep.

This is when my memories of home start spilling out of my brain and play out across the dark ceiling like a film being shown on a projector screen.

This happened to me last night, so I decided that I would make a sleepy little mental note of all my homesick thoughts and write them out as soon as I woke up the next morning. So, ladies and gentlemen, sit back and enjoy this messy list of pure nostalgia.

A few of my favorite things

I miss the the still streets. They're so wide and empty in the center, but dotted along the edges are never changing houses that are full of families and overflowing with memories and family dogs and tree houses.

I miss nights spent on back roads. Watching the stars punch holes through the deep, dark and never ending sky and the sound of absolute silence, with the exception of a breeze rustling through the sage brush.

I miss the smell of fresh cut grass and the sweet smell of honey suckle that grows in my mom's back yard.

I miss the CH-CH-CH sound of the big sprinklers in the grass hay fields surrounding my mom's house.

I miss the sound of cows mooing and coyotes howling and the strange mix of comfort and fear that comes with their shrieks.

I miss the powerful, warm wind on my face and through my hair, overtaking every other sound and momentarily knocking the breath out of my lungs.

I miss the sunny and crisp autumn mornings when the only sounds to be heard are those of dry fallen leaves, skipping down the paved streets and birds singing in the naked trees.

I miss the sound of crowds cheering at a Friday night football game. The sound of the ref's whistles and the shouting of fired up dads echoing all the way to my street at the other end of town.

I miss the smell of popcorn, the sound of the pep band and the thundering of basketball shoes on the glossy gym floor, and the intense rush of adrenaline I felt while playing our out of town rivals and hearing the whole town cheer and fight for our team. And of course the occasional glance to a cute boy in the stands to see if they saw that basket I just made.

I miss the lectures from my dad on all the things I need to work on to improve my game play. I would roll my eyes and say "I know dad I'm trying" and my mom would chime in "Oh hunny you played great don't worry."

I miss the familiar faces that I've known and have known me since before I was old enough to speak.

I miss the nights spent wandering around the sleepy streets with friends after basketball practice or a school dance, listening to music on our iPods, thinking we were so cool and so funny and that we would all stay the same forever. I miss every one of those goofy teenage faces.

I miss winter nights spent Christmas caroling with friends, family and what seemed like the whole town (looking back now it was probably like 20 people). The way we would all gather on a flat bed trailer, sitting on hay bails and drinking hot cocoa in the freezing winter nights. I can just see the warm glow of the old Christmas lights dotted along a snowy main street.

I miss the excitement I felt when getting in a car packed full of friends and driving 45 minutes to the "city" where we would go to the movie theater and Chinese restaurant and then drive all the way back home.

I miss the sound of our family dogs barking when the car pulled up in front of the house after a long drive to the city and back. The smell of the wood stove and whatever mom had made for dinner, greeting me at the door.

Home. I miss home, and I don't mean just the walls and the roof and the physical property that we call a house.

I mean the unchanging landscape, the memories (good and bad but all important), the sense of community and holiday traditions, the quiet that inevitably comes with small towns and all the comforting sounds, smells and sensations that fill the quiet.

If you finished this whole rambling post, I hope you enjoyed it in one way or another!

Let me know if you share any of the same sweet memories of growing up in a small town, in the comments below and if you liked this post, please feel free to share on your social media.

Thanks for reading :)