So long, farewell...

30 years was exactly as long as we needed in our first house

It smells weird.

That was how I was going to start this essay about our new house.

Then I was going to shed tears and share heartfelt memories from my 30 years in our first house. What it was like to pack up those memories, to leave the place where we brought home three of our four babies, and danced with them around the dining room, and found them smoking pot and drinking.

I was going to share a quote from “Infinite Jest” by David Foster Wallace that illustrates how much I love change – “Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks in it.”

And then I was going to riff on passages from “Anne’s House of Dreams,” one of the Anne of Green Gables books in which Anne leaves her own beloved home. Lucy Maud Montgomery writes so beautifully about how leaving one’s home can tug at the heart.

One October morning Anne wakened to the idea that she had slept for the last time under the roof of her little house. … “We have been very happy here, haven’t we Anne-girl?” said Gilbert, his voice full of feeling. … She went out, closing and locking the door behind her. … “Good-bye, dear little house of dreams.”

But something funny happened on my long-delayed trip to the computer.

As I unpacked boxes and settled into our new home – a home we weren’t really looking for – I wasn’t so sad anymore. It was fun to unpack (I’m rethinking that word “fun” even as I type it), to find new places to put all my Christmas decorations, to discover which of the many light switches turns on which of the many lights.

Change isn’t so bad after all.

---

I had planned a maudlin farewell tour of our old house. But I didn’t have time to go room by room and sit on the empty floors and reminisce. I was too busy cleaning cobwebs out of closets, getting ready to hand over the keys to the new owners, a young couple who told us the old windows that we didn’t replace in the dining room, the ones the inspector called us out on for not being able to open, were the thing that sold them on the house.

I was so torn about moving. But on the day we accepted the offer on our house, the door handle to the porch came off in my hand.

I accepted it as a sign.

Those damn doorknobs, the beautiful glass knobs that we reattached countless times in countless places.

The garage that we transformed into a musical cafe for the Hootenanny each fall. The windows I stained to match the beautiful wood trim. The window boxes Mike crafted out of cedar that are finally showing signs of wear, probably one winter away from disintegrating. (Another sign.)

My neighbors left a parting gift for us on the front stoop while we were at dinner one exhausted night. I sent them a thank you text – “We’re spending our last night in our house of 30 years” – as tears flowed.

---

Our last chore at the old house – to mop away all the dirty footsteps we and the movers left. With each swipe, Mike erased our footprints, leaving a clean dance floor for the new owners.

But you can’t entirely wipe out three decades of a family’s life. Those faint footprints Conor left when he walked over our newly sanded and stained floors before they were dry? They remain – a little reminder of the messy, beautiful life of the family who lived at 2221 Meadowwood (one word, two w’s).

---

P.S.

You can buy a house but you can’t buy a home.

– Jon Batiste

We bought our first house just after Conor was born, and eventually we made it a home. The nearly 100-year-old Tudor has been the backdrop to so many chapters of our lives. As we begin a new one, I want to remember the moments that made this place a home. (I’m crying again.)

But I also take heart in what Anne’s friend told her as she left her house of dreams.

“You know you will like that lovely old place at the Glen after you have lived in it long enough to have dear memories woven about it. Friends will come there as they have come here – happiness will glorify it for you. Now, it’s just a house to you – but the years will make it a home.”

Let the memory-weaving commence. (And could someone stitch those last two sentences onto a pillow for me?)