Coming Home...

Escrow closed on our house today. Well, it is no longer our house. It now belongs to a lovely family with 5 children, who, are thrilled to have found it and who, I know, without a doubt, will make it their own, their home. So I sit here thinking about home and all that the word implies... home. Tim and I bought our first house 14 years ago, a small, 3 bedroom, 1 bath house with a huge yard and a lot of potential. We borrowed the down payment and we signed on the dotted line and, for 8 years, we loved and played, grew our family and even, got a dog, in that house. In year 9, we were ready to expand and so began the remodel that became the house that stands there today: 3091 square feet, 5 bedrooms, everything brand new, chosen with a specific intention, a floor plan borrowed from my brother's former home; it became an incredible, beautiful new house, not even slightly reminiscent of the former building that sat in the same spot. It took a year to build and a month after moving "back" in, our third child came along, occupying a new nursery, in soft green with zoo animals and a view of the city lights out of the large picture window. While things have changed for us dramatically in the past year, the financial changes have been the most frustrating and sometimes difficult to deal with; strangely, the boys have not been all that upset by the sale of our house and, now that we are in a "new" house, renting again (sigh), they seem fine with the transition and all that it has brought in the last month. The stress of moving and of having to pack up 14 years of life is never easy, but downsizing along with it has made it so much more stressful. It takes an interesting and creative means of looking at a situation to really find the gem in it. That's when you call in your friends and beg for help. I could not have made this transition without them, without their objectivity... I guess at the end of the day, it would be really simple for me to say that is doesn't matter, that we all have our health and our family and a home is where you are and not in the "place" where you live and while I do believe that, 98% of that, there is also a small part of me that will always belong at our old address. There is a part of who I was and who the children were when we began the process of owning a home there, of Nick taking his first steps there, of Jake playing with our first dog Riley there, of bringing Ty home to the only house he has ever known. There is a huge part of me that will long for the babysitter swing in the backyard and of all of those summer days when the neighborhood kids used to come and jump on the trampoline while I squirted them with the hose. There is a part of me that wishes that we could leave the tent up all summer and just sleep in the backyard every night and there is a huge part of me that will miss decorating that beautiful house for Christmas, all lit up with soft white lights, sitting in front of the fire, watching A Christmas Story on a 24 hour loop while everyone else has gone to bed. I will miss the stairs; I know that sounds strange, but I didn't mind going up and down those stairs. I will miss all of the jasmine that I planted last year that is now spreading like wildfire and I will miss some of the neighbors, not all of the neighbors, but some of them... I am grateful that someone loves the house as much as I have loved living there and the part of me that longs for it and what we had there is the same part of me that also looks forward to a smaller life in a sense, of a smaller payment, a smaller maintenence plan, a smaller way of looking at things maybe. I got a chance to live in the big house, to help build it, to design it, to choose everything in it, to build memories in it. I will cherish every moment that we lived there, but tonight I look forward to making new memories and wherever the future takes us, I will know in my heart that, in some small way, 4746 W. 191st St. will always belong to our family and that our memories will float alonside of all of those that will be made by the family that now lives there. I wish them well and I hope that they have many years of happiness there. I know that we did.