There’s something about this time of year that cracks me open in ways I never fully expect. Maybe it’s the quiet. Maybe it’s tradition. Maybe it’s returning to places that once held me and realizing I don’t quite fit inside them anymore.
Every year, I spend a night back at my mom’s house. Christmas Eve. The same house I grew up in, where mornings once started early and excitement felt tangible in the air. I sleep there, wake up there, and for a moment it almost feels like nothing has changed. But when I open my eyes, I realize it has.
It’s not my room anymore, not really. It holds my memories, but not my life. The walls are familiar, the creaks in the bedroom doors still recognizable, yet everything feels borrowed. Like I’m stepping into a version of myself that lived there once, but moved on quietly without asking permission.
And I think that’s why this season feels so heavy sometimes. Not because it’s sad, but because it reminds me of how deeply I’ve lived.
I miss walking to my friends’ houses before any of us could drive. I miss sleepovers that felt endless, when winter nights blurred into mornings and responsibility felt far away. I miss freeze-out drives with the windows down, laughing through chattering teeth, convinced we were invincible. I miss the little traditions we didn’t know were traditions yet.
What I miss most isn’t the house, or even the town itself.
It’s the people.
Most of us have moved away. We all grew up. We scattered. We built new lives, found new versions of happiness, met people who know us as we are now. And while I’m grateful for who we’ve become, there’s still an ache that shows up this time of year, a longing for the sameness, the closeness, the way life once felt contained and shared.
Going back now feels like walking through a snow-globe version of my past. Beautiful. Preserved. Still. Our home town didn’t change (US 42 definitely has changed)—we did. And somehow, that’s harder to accept than if everything had disappeared completely.
I’m realizing that home was never the place. It was the people who filled it. The laughter, the rituals, the late nights and early mornings. Once those people leave, the place becomes quiet, but the memories stay loud.
I don’t think I say this out loud much, but I think about you all so much.The friends and family who made my hometown feel alive, who turned ordinary days into something sacred. You made that place home to me.
Even now, during a season that asks us to look back, I carry you forward. In the way I love. In the way nostalgia finds me when the air turns cold. In the way I know that growing up doesn’t mean losing, it means remembering.
Some homes don’t follow you into adulthood.
But they shape you enough that they never really leave.
I sure do miss you guys,
Emi Sue
Growing up is weird.
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