Home is...

A friend of mine is saying goodbye to her childhood home.
Another friend still mourns hers over a year after it was gone.

I have a life-long friend who grew up in a neighborhood surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. She built her house in the lot behind her parents’ house, the only home she ever lived in. Her sister built her house across the street from their parents.

I can’t imagine living that way. Or, rather, I can only imagine.

I’ve moved over 30 times in my life. When I was growing up we never lived anywhere longer than two or three years. We moved. A lot. As an adult, I’ve also moved a lot. We’ve been in our current house for six years, almost as long as the previous one. We were there seven. That’s longer than anywhere else. Ever.

Sometimes I think that there must be some gypsy blood mixed in with that of my rabble-rouser, non-Pilgrim Mayflower ancestor. My father moved a lot while growing up, so did his mother, and her father, and so on back and back through the generations. For the most part they settled in one place sometime after one or more of their children moved out. And then the children move. And move. And move. Our youngest will soon be done college. I wonder when and where I will settle down...if...

When you say goodbye to a home, you can take your memories with you, but their shadows remain with the house, whispering silently between the walls, under the floors, and above the ceilings. The window panes hold tight to the pains they witnessed, the years of tears splashed like so many raindrops. They also remember the joys, the toys, and the girls and boys.

And the pets. Many are buried under bushes and trees, or under rocks and flowers. My no-longer-living pets are widely scattered. My turtles Tom & Jerry are in Mars. My dogs Cinamon (sic) and Bridget are at the top of the hill near Eastbrook. Two orange kittens, three lorikeets, and a hamster are in two places in Venezuela. Two guinea pigs are in New Wilmington. The multitudes of fish were mostly flushed, but not all at once.

My grandmother’s house was one of the few consistent places I knew while growing up. She lived in the same house from the time I was born until I was in my 40s. Another was a certain pine tree that my great-grandfather had planted when my grandma was a little girl. I lived only a few miles from it when I lived in the last place I lived before where I am now. My aunts moved my grandma out west when she was in her mid 90s. When she died, she was just six months shy of her 100th birthday. Very shortly after, the tree went down in a storm. I miss her house almost as much as I miss her.

Saying goodbye to a home doesn’t have to be the end. You keep pieces of the home in your heart for as long as you live. It keeps pieces of you, too.

(for Laura, Hana, and Shelly)