Last Week Home

So, I'm moving in the next 2/3 days.

It's weird.

End of story, it's weird. It's hard to think of another way to put it.

A lot of people have been asking me lately how it feels to be moving. I haven't been able to answer them. I still can't, to be honest. I know it's a feeling I won't be able to decide on until I'm actively on the road.

Thing is, moving isn't weird to me.

One of my first memories of life is moving. It's sitting in the car on the drive up to our new home, and turning around and watching the cat weave through the assorted boxes, tail bobbing as he decided on his next hiding spot in the back.

I moved so often when I lived in the Midwest that a few of my friends used to joke that I only hit them up to hangout when I needed help to move (and hey, that was only accurate for a few of them (they were the fundamental evangelical couple I had befriended through mutual classes in college)).

So, what I'm trying to get at here is that moving isn't a new thing to me. Heck, it doesn't really even excite me anymore. It's just a thing that happens. This move might be slightly farther than others (moving literally across the country), but the prep for it is still the same. I'm still packing up all of my stuff into boxes, most of which are the exact same boxes that I moved with last time, and just waiting now for the final goodbyes to this place.

Heck, right now I'm sitting downstairs at the dining table instead of in my room at my desk, as, well, I don't have a desk anymore. It's packed up. I'm at that part of packing.

But, there are differences to this move. Ones that I know will hit me eventually. I know they probably won't for a while. But then it will all click and smack me right in the face.

You see, I'm moving out of my parents home (again), and this time they're moving as well. That's right, they've sold the house. I will never return.

That's an idea that I still haven't really wrapped my head around. This has been the house I've always been able to fall back on for almost 20 years. Even when I moved out on my own and lived in the Midwest for 8 years, I knew that if anything happened, I would be able to return to this little New England home.

And now I can't.

All of my memories of this place will only be memories. I can never return to recreate or add to them. They are finite.

It isn't just me moving out of this place, me with boxes strewn about the house, it is them too. My stuff has been designated to the left in the garage, theirs to the right.

This is the emptiest this house has ever felt.

Even more so than when we moved in.

Sure, the first night in this house we slept on the floor and ate pizza off of paper towels and that was that. But, that house was ready for us. It may have not had our furniture in it until the following morning, but it was brimming with promise and potential. Potential that it has more than fulfilled. It has been the home to 10 pets over the years, 4 people have called it home during that time, with add-ons from school friends who needed a safe spot, bringing that number closer to 10 once more.

And now? It's empty. All of the potential and promise, all of the light and laughter, all of those hopes and dreams, they're being packed up, piece by piece, contained and hidden away waiting to be unveiled once more in their new home.

I'm taking my little corner of promise and light and hopes and going elsewhere. They preparing to inherit land from one set of grandparents, I'm taking over my greatgrandmother's old home in another place.

It's not just a beginning of a new chapter, it's the finite and total ending of another.

Since I've moved from home before, and did quite well, it won't be a strange thing to leave. I know this.

But.

One day.

It's going to hit me that I can never return. I will never again stand in this house. My feet will never again cross the threshold of the house that made me and raised me.

It will take time. But one day. I don't know when. It will hit me. And I will have to deal with that reality.

But, in the meantime, I will move on, looking forward to the future and seeing what opportunity lies ahead.

And, due to my time in this house....

The future is looking mighty bright.