The concept of home

Home is the place where we feel that we belong. Home is the place where we
will always be welcome and where we live with the most important people of
our lives. There we create memories for a lifetime.
We should always be grateful for our home, because there are many people
who don’t have a place that they can call ‘‘home’’. Even so, there are still people
who aren’t grateful for their home and all that they have, which is the case of
Helen.
Helen was a little girl who, around the 1990s, lived in a small village in the
countryside in the north of England with her sister and her parents.
Their house was old and it wasn’t very spacious. However, it was cosy and it
had everything that they needed. It was a two storey cottage house made from
brown bricks and with a thatched roof. The house had two tiny bedrooms, a
traditional bathroom, a narrow kitchen, a small living room and a garden.
When entering the house we could see a wooden door that led to the hall,
and right in front of that hall, there was a small living room which had two
leather armchairs and an old television on top of a TV stand made of wood.
Next to the armchairs there was a coffee table with several newspapers on top of
it.
Beside the living room, there was a door that led to the kitchen. The
kitchen was narrow and had only the essential furniture to eat, make and store
food. They had no dishwasher or washing machine so they washed everything
by hand.
When leaving the kitchen, there was a small spiral staircase leading to the
second floor. On the second floor there were the two tiny bedrooms and the
bathroom.
The parents’ bedroom had a double bed, a wardrobe with pocket doors and
a chest of drawers with a mirror above it.
 Near the parents’ bedroom there was the sisters’ bedroom. It was slightly
smaller than the parents’ and had a wooden bunk bed, a chest of drawers with
their clothes in it and a small desk with two chairs where they studied.
Between the two bedrooms, there was the traditional bathroom with a
double washbasin, a bath and a toilet. That was the only bathroom in the
house, since they couldn’t afford a house with two bathrooms.
From Monday to Friday, Helen and her sister had to walk for half an hour
in order to get to the bus station and go to school. It was very tiring. Unlike her
sister, Helen hated living in that village and disliked her sister. For that reason
she was frustrated and had the desire to leave that village and live in a big city,
she just didn’t know what awaited her.
One day Helen was so angry that she destroyed the flowers in the backyard
and messed up her bedroom on purpose. Helen’s parents talked to her and
tried to make her understand that even if they didn’t have the best living
conditions and did not have a big house, they knew that was their home and
that’s why they were grateful for it, but Helen paid little attention to those
words.
At the age of eighteen, when Helen graduated from high school, she
decided to leave the village, even after their parents and sister warned her not to
go. Helen’s mother was a florist and her father was the village’s postman and
they didn’t receive much money at the end of the month, but still tried to give
their daughters an allowance. Over the years, Helen saved the money that her
parents gave her and now she was going to use it to pay for a train trip to
London.
When arriving in London, Helen started looking for a job, but it was very
difficult to find a job that paid well enough for her to live in a flat on her own.
After some time searching, she found work as a waitress in a restaurant in
central London, but it still didn’t pay well enough for her to live in a flat on her
own, so she had to share a flat with a colleague of hers who was also struggling
to find a job. They each paid half of the bills and lived like this for some time in
a very small flat.
 Helen couldn’t get used to the city and had to work until midnight,
because she worked in a restaurant. She wasn't enjoying that life in London.
One day, Helen´s colleague found a flat with a price she could afford and
moved in, leaving Helen alone. Helen had no way to pay the rent for the flat
where she lived and there wasn't any other flat with a price she could afford and
she had no other choice but to move back to her old home.
Helen returned home with the money that she had left. When she arrived,
she knocked on the door and her mother opened it and started crying with joy
and gave her a big hug.
Helen, who was also happy to see her, hugged her too. Her father and sister also
came and hugged her. From that moment on, Helen realized that a real home is
the place that makes us feel happy and not the place where we dream of living.
Helen started working as a florist with her mother and finally understood the
concept of home and that we don't need much to be happy.