A desire for "Home"

Night after night, the disruptive alarm on my cell phone reminds me of something I am suppose to be doing. Sharply at 8:30pm, I am given a bold reminder with two simple words: "Write Blog"  Being a girl, you would think this would be a simple task. After all, girls love to talk and I am no exception to that stereotype. I often become a Facebook stalker, inspecting post after post, hoping that something will spark a train of thought in my head and inspire me to have something to say. 

Tonight I saw a post that read:
 
"There will be so many times you feel like you've failed. But in the eyes, heart, and mind of your child, you are supermom. 

What is on my mind tonight is the possibility of moving, again. I desperately want to have a place of our own that my kids can identify as "home." I hear stories all the time that start with, "The house I grew up in..." 

When I was a kid, we had a house my mom rented when I was younger that I don't remember a whole lot about. I think it was white and had a pretty big yard, or at least that is the image that comes to mind when I think about it. I very vividly remember the huge mulberry tree in the front yard, probably because of playing outside barefoot and constantly coming in with purple feet. I loved to pick the mulberries but I never ate them. I only have a few really happy memories in that house. I remember playing "Ghost in the Graveyard" and climbing up really high in a tree where no one could find me. I waited, watching everyone, for a long while before climbing down. I didn't want to give away such an awesome place to hide. I remember the hole in the floor where my mom's bed leg broke through. I remember my neighbor's house across the street. I loved to go there to play; their daughter had everything "Barbie" you could possibly imagine. I felt safe there. 

We then moved to a house that my grandfather, "Papa" built. Papa was the best grandfather a girl could hope for. I remember cuddling with him, hanging out with him. I remember the way he used his middle finger to point things out. I remember his garden in the back yard that he worked in all the time. I remember a basement full of collected rocks, and trees made out of copper wires adhered to smoothed out rocks that looked like they had crystals in them, animals glued to the bottom. I remember thin green carpeting that had no padding what so ever and yellow walls and an unfinished basement. I remember playing "500" and "Running Bases" in the yard and the insane flooding that would happen after every horrendous downpour. I remember, after Papa passed away, once again not feeling safe.

After my mom's last divorce, we moved from apartment, to house, to apartment and suddenly I was grown with little to no real sense of "home." As a young adult, I continued to move around -- relationships would end that were no longer working, friendships would break down where suddenly, time after time, I would find myself in search of a new place to live. There were times my only address was "staying with friends" where some nights, many nights, I really wasn't sure where I was going to sleep. I remember the sense of accomplishment I felt when I finally had my own apartment, in my name, and no one could take it away from me. It felt good to have a key to a door where my things and I resided without disruption. 

I see myself repeating some of the patterns I saw growing up and I know these are not the experiences I want to impress into my children's minds. We had a house for a while, I think for four or five years. It was a fixer upper that we grew out of once my first son started to get bigger. We moved into a much better house, but it was short lived. We weren't there more than a couple of years before I found myself getting a divorce and having no other choice but to move. The house was far too expensive for me to handle solo. 

I moved myself and my then two children five-hundred miles away from everything we knew. We moved from a big, beautiful, spacious house with an adorable fenced in back yard into an apartment away from everyone we knew. We stayed there for a couple of years, and then I made a hasty decision, and moved into an apartment that had an indoor pool and a little bit more square footage. I envisioned all the fun we would have being able to swim all year around, and the playground and picnic tables outside we would build memories around. Now the pool is gone along with the picnic tables and the playground. Reality wasn't even close to the picture that the previous manager of this property had painted for me before moving in. We have stuck it out for almost two years, and now I find myself thinking about moving...again. 

I don't want to be the mom that moves her kids every couple of years. I know what it felt like to switch schools, sometimes in the middle of a school year and I don't want to push those experiences onto my kids. What do I do. I want a home where my family can bond and grow and love. The rent has been increased and the perks have gone away. Do I move us again, perhaps BACK to where we used to live in an effort to be able to save more money and be able to purchase a home quicker? My oldest daughter is twelve-years-old, she only has so many years left with me at "home." She deserves stability, they all do. I feel an overwhelming need to provide this for them. Do the means of moving again justify the end result I am hoping for, preparing for? Or, is it just another move? 

I don't know what to do.