Goodbye the place of memories

I desperately need to be in bed, but instead I type. 

I have been totally okay - totally factual - totally business - about my parents selling their house.  It had to be done.  They need something that takes less effort to keep up.  Smaller would be good.  Paid for will be even better.  It had to happen.

I did spend a little time last year lamenting the fact that it had to happen and wishing that there was a way for someone to keep it.  But I finally managed to get my senses about me and remember that it really is just a house.  And I knew - I KNOW - that it's the right thing.

But just a house or not, I walked in the back door earlier today and it just hit me.

It's empty.

It's done.

It's forever gone.

Silly enough, it's not the first time that my family has moved out of this house - the first time was when I was ten - but it stayed in the family at that point - and eventually I ended up back there - and then my parents did.

And there are decades worth of memories there.

And it's crazy - because the scene that plays out in every movie as someone is leaving a house behind played out for me today.

Just walking into one room brought a flood of memories ~

From pretending to shave with a silly plastic razor and bubbles when I was Miss E's age...

To turning myself into a Smurf when I dropped a royal blue tissue paper pompom into the bathtub with me....

To bathing Miss E in the kitchen sink when she was just a few days old.

Lessons were learned in that house.

Life choices made.

Memories of a childhood filled with love and wonder.  Joy and discovery.

4H rabbits...my own peg on the coat rack in the tree fort - labeled with my anticipated graduation year.  I have always wondered what year Pedro and I determined and if we got it right.  The fort has been gone for many years.  A play house in it's place.

A million and one trips to the beach, saying goodbye to my grandma, watching younger cousins grow up.

Being told "Yeah, you're one of them" - an older gentleman's way of saying "I know you belong to the family that has always lived here."

It was in that house that Jesus and I met.

And it was in that house that many years later Jesus and I became BFF's.

It was the central meeting place for countless Thanksgiving weekends - green mashed potatoes and all.  :)

Easter gatherings.  Christmas parties.  Just because gatherings.  They were there.

I know exactly how the road feels on the way there.  How many bumps, the sound of the road and the way the car feels before turning in.

One of the neighbors entertained us beyond reason.  Who really throws away a picture of the Virgin Mary and seven and a half half dollar bills into their neighbors garbage?  This guy did.

He also entertained us one evening by riding his moped around his house repeatedly.  I can remember sitting at the table watching, laughing and wondering what he would dream up next.


I fell in love with my husband while living there.

And it is where I changed out of my wedding dress and into street clothes as TDM and I embarked on our new life together.

That is the house where I sought refuge when Smiley Girl was first born, Miss E was too active and TDM was traveling.

I know that it isn't the house, it's the people that were in it, but it has been 'home' for so much of my life.  


All of that and more flooded my heart this afternoon.  I just didn't see it coming.

I don't regret that it's over but it made me melancholy in a way that might not be understood.

So goodbye the home of my childhood.  Goodbye the place of memories.

It's time to make some new ones.  :)