Once again I am back at my 26 in 26 I started three years ago. I’m still working my way through the alphabet of things in my life that I am thankful for. Maybe by the time I’m 30 I’ll reach the end of the alphabet.
Home. If we are lucky home is a word associated with good feelings. Most of my life home has been a small suburb of New Jersey.
Jersey is home to the cul-de-sac I ran up and down during my childhood summers and distant memories of countless skinned knees and scars. It holds the foundations of the schools whose halls I walked for 13 years. The lessons of the teachers that changed me. It is filled with the fields I played hours of soccer on and all the goals, fouls, wins and hard fought losses that go along with them. The bridge I had my first kiss and the cafeteria of my first dance. The roads I spent countless hours driving nowhere in particular with my friends. The final resting place of my father and the garden he grew.
I was very fortunate to grow up in a good home. With cousins who lived two houses down from me, best friends who lived three down and grandparents who lived just a few more miles away.
Even though I live in Virginia now and consider it my home, Jersey will always be where it all began. Its soil holds the roots of my story.
Loaded Learning 
This is a wonderful post.
I miss you, Shannon.
Thanks Gardner. I miss you too. I hope our paths cross again someday.