model of my hometown created by Carl Thorp in 1976...

I love Tennessee…we have made a life and a home here for 17 years. We have relationships that we consider “family” here, we have a nice home, our children have good friends, and lots of opportunities here. I grew up in a small town in Louisiana and I know my children have more opportunities here than they would there, and I certainly have no intention of uprooting them right now, but sometimes I miss home. I miss the small town, and all that goes with that…I feel sad when I think there is nowhere for us to stay if we take a trip home. The home my grandparents built is in the hands of another owner now, and we have no house there to visit, but in my heart it will always be home.  The love I have for that home is different than the love I have for my current one…  It is where I grew up, where I learned to ride a bike, formed relationships, had my first kiss, learned to drive, got engaged and married, and first learned about Jesus…So there is part of me that longs to go back there and live…there is part of me that wants my children to have the love that I have for my hometown, and my youngest really has scarce memories of it now…its kinda heart breaking to me in a way…but then again, we are making memories for them here…they will look back on this home and hopefully have the same emotions that I have for my hometown…I’m not sure I will live in this house forever, or if I will ever move back home to Franklinton…hmm, maybe it’s the trying to hang onto youth, or the memories that makes “going home” so appealing…maybe the longing isn’t to live there as much as it is to re-live there…which we all know can’t happen…and yet still the longing is there…funny, I couldn’t wait to move away when I was younger, thinking I had to get out of that dead-end town…and how appealing a dead-end town is in this fast-paced crazy world today.  Home is where your heart is…I guess that’s true…my heart is here in TN, but it’s there in Franklinton too, that little town in the middle of nowhere where I grew up.