48 THE CEDARVILLE REVIEW think of cat’s fur and wool. A soft sun pulsed behind the gray. I felt the air, tasted it, held it. Winter is the sound of silence. It sat around the cars and buildings, evenly and heavily. I breathed in the clearness of it and, closing my eyes, thought I was back home. Eight hundred miles from Minnesota, I stretched out my hand to catch the same kind of snowflakes which got stuck in my bedroom window screens. They followed the same six-pointed design and melted in the same way. They tasted the same and decorated my hair the same. And I realized, when I think of home, I think of snow. Home is a place, but home is also a feeling, a feeling of comfort and familiarity. Oliver Wendell Holmes once said, “Where we love is home—home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.” While a beautiful quote, I wonder if it’s quite so simple as “home is where the heart is.” For where precisely is my heart? Is it crystallized into the giant snow piles towering over the Walmart parking lot? Is it woven into Christmas and a street lamp from Narnia? Is it found in the name “Minnesota” or in “Ohio”? Maybe it lies where I have the most memories. But what if they are split between two places? How do you determine the better half? In Ohio, I have family and my university. Each semester, I engrave new memories onto my heart, carving out new handholds on the mountain of life. My grandparents’ house becomes more vibrant and joyful. I remember my childhood before
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