When Home Becomes a Memory
Fifteen years ago, an average American family moved from Florida to Colorado, trading swamps and beaches for mountains and evergreens. Fifteen years ago, a first grader said goodbye to the only life she ever knew for an exciting adventure.
Fifteen years later, and I am no longer that first grader.
Fifteen years later, I said goodbye to the home that watched me and my little brother grow up.
When my mother told me she was selling the house for a quieter life with my father in their mountain cabin, I was excited for them. I knew it was time for them to move on. They’d been empty nesters for multiple years at this point. All but one bedroom in their house had long been turned into a guest room. (Actually, it only took my mom a week to turn my room into a guest/her dressing room when I moved out.)
One might think I would be used to goodbyes at this point, but I’m not sure that will ever really happen.
As I walked through the house one last time, different parts of my childhood and teenage years rose from the depths of my memory.
Jumping on my red razor scooter to see if my best friend up the street wanted to play.
Knocking on all our friends’ doors to see who wanted to go swim in the creek outside our neighborhood, and picking off leeches from our legs on the front porch while replenishing our play-worn bodies with a snack.
Packing a picnic and our fishing poles in our green plastic wagon, and dragging it across the railroad tracks to the nature park with high hopes of a successful catch from the pond.
Over the years, that house watched us go to school, do our homework, make new friends, scrape our knees on the sidewalk, practice sports with the hope of making the team, get our first crushes, drive our first cars, get our first jobs, find ourselves, choose our futures, and eventually move out and on with our young adult lives.
I looked at the barren walls, and remembered all the pictures that would never hang there again. Pictures of my brothers, my parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.
I remembered all the stuff that had been passed down to us from generation to generation, usually holding little use to us other than decoration and a fun story.
I thought about all the holidays we’d spent there together as a family, and everyone that had passed in and out of our home and our lives over the years.
Change is a funny thing. We don’t see it coming, nor do we really notice it until we’re in the midst of its chaos. Suddenly the future is before us, and we look back to figure out where the time went and how the hell we got to where we are. Without warning, we’re at the threshold between what lies before and what lies ahead.
I once read that home is a time, not a place. We’ve all heard the saying that home is where the heart is. I think we come to have many homes as we go through our lives. We go to different places and meet different people, and we don’t even know the richness that the meaning of home comes to hold until it becomes a memory.
As I drove away from the house one last time — knowing it was the last time — an explosion of emotion burst through my heart and I cried. I didn’t think I’d cry, but there I was, blubbering at my steering wheel while wiping tears from my eyes so I didn’t crash.
And I’m happy that I did.
Because crying means I loved something honestly and to the fullest, and I can be thankful for what it gave me.
Our house on Allen Drive gave me an early life that I will always look back on and smile at; years that made me who I am today.
I’m not sad at what has been lost. Scared, maybe, about what’s to come, because, unlike my first grade self, I now know the bounds of life’s uncertainty and mystery.
But more than anything, I’m grateful. Grateful for the years I’ve lived, where I’ve lived them, who I’ve lived them with, and the way they’ve shaped who I am.
And even if it is only in memory, that home will always be a home in my heart.
