a love letter to 221 elmhurst

The movers came this morning.  By mid-afternoon, everything in the house was in neat stacks of boxes, ready to get loaded into the truck tomorrow.  Tomorrow evening, this house will be empty, save a suitcase of get-me-through-the-week necessities and the pets.  By the time the sun rises on Friday morning, we'll be gone.  It will be deceptively quick, not dragging on as I suspected it would when I don't have a television to distract me.  I sit on my couch, and the house is so quiet.  Barrett is asleep, and Britton is off playing with neighborhood friends she won't see again after tonight.  It's past her bedtime, way past, and I can't bring myself to go to the front door and call her in.  Because I know her face will crumble, and I know she'll cry.

I offered that Britton could sleep with me tonight, but she doesn't want to - she wants to sleep in her bed, she wants to "say goodbye" to her room.  She's moved twice since she was born, and this move, her third, will be the one she might remember.  This is the first move that makes her sad, not just losing her friends but also her school, her Memaw and PawPaw, and the places she has come to know.  Familiarity is hard-won, and it has taken all of the last four years to get to the point where I see people in the grocery store I know, every now and then.

We're all saying goodbye.  Not just to friends and neighbors and a Daisy troop and co-workers who won't be co-workers anymore.  Britton speaks in "last times" - the last time we'll go to the pool, Fun Fore All, the library, karate, her bedroom.  It's ten minutes later and I still can't face making her come inside, saying goodbye to her friends for the last time.

Losing something makes you love it more - the rose-colored glasses have been on my face all week.  But I do love this house.  I wouldn't have chosen to leave otherwise, and I did believe there was a good chance my children would run down that staircase every Christmas morning.  My neighbors are excited that "the new family" has children, will no doubt fit right into the spot we'll leave.  I just hope they love my house as much as I do.  I want them to sit on the deck and look out over the yard and know that this year, finally, the flowers finally came into bloom and the yard has never looked better.  I want them to hate the neighbor's German Shepherd, and roll their eyes every time the dog barks at nothing.  I want them to be amazed at Christmastime, when all 303 houses light luminaries down their sidewalks and everyone climbs into their cars to drive slowly around the neighborhood.  I want them to be so ill-prepared for Halloween that they only buy one giant bag of candy from Costco for Halloween, and vow not to make that mistake again - two minimum, for sure.  And to drag their chairs to the end of the driveway so the kids don't have to climb the front stairs, and compliment every costume as if they know all the children behind the masks, and when their kids get tired of trick-or-treating they make some hot chocolate to warm up.

I'll miss all of that, and more.  This is the house I brought Barrett home from the hospital to.  This town's name sounds like a magical homey winter wonderland, and while it isn't the first place I've lived that has snow, it's where I taught my children how beautiful snow can be.  Change has always been hard for me, probably because not a lot changed in my life growing up.  Change isn't something I hope one day to be good at.  I look around, at the boxes and piles and sleeping Sadie and I'm trying to memorize this place.

from the outside looking in, cleared off bookcases and boxes

Tonight, it is real, it is finally sinking in.  I will have to say goodbye and I won't want to.