Time to say goodbye

This past year seems to be full of goodbyes and it doesn’t seem like it is going to slow down anytime soon.  As I previously mentioned my parents courageously left this past Monday to serve a mission in Serbia of all places and while tremendously hard as it was to say goodbye to them for the next 18 months I couldn’t be prouder.  They have given me a lot to live up too.  

For years now we have been discussing with my parents about buying their house because of their desire/need to downsize in home size and yard size and my sentimental need to hang onto everything from my childhood  (let’s be honest I’m a little OCD when it comes to sentimentality to the tune that I own mixing bowls simply because my mom had one just like it when I was growing up and I told B that we needed flour sack towels to dry dishes because they were better…oh and because it is what I used growing up).  With my parents leaving on their mission we all thought this would be the time to move forward with the purchase although none of us expected we would only have two months to wrap up the sell and packing up their whole house let alone planning for their mission but my parents managed to get it all done and we are now the very proud owners of 492 East Sheridan Circle. 

While I am beyond thrilled to finally own my dream home and the opportunity to make it our home I didn’t plan on the emotions that I would experience in having to say goodbye to my childhood home.  After all I have lived in this house my entire life…it is the only home I have known and has been my shelter, my comfort, my home base and the place I knew I was loved.  As I have walked through the now empty rooms I am riddled with memories from my childhood, each room carrying its own potency to trigger moments of laughter or tears.  I remember playing truck stop in our basement with our petulant teenage daughter Princess Leah.  I remember dancing in the living room with Becki to The Carpenters and Roger Whitaker.  I remember working with my dad in his shop building this thing or that.  I remember stripping wallpaper with my mom as we changed the same wall from a deer mural to splattered paint wallpaper and back to paint again.  I remember my mom dressed as the guy from Chain Saw massacre scaring me and my friends to death on the trampoline in the back yard and my dad standing at the top of the stairs mooning Becki and I.  How blessed I am to have had the life that I did and the parents who created such a haven for my siblings and I.  With each memory lies a seed of hope that B and I will be able to continue on in the same tradition and that our kids will one day look at this home with similar eyes.  I even asked my mom before she left “How do I make my kids as sentimental as I am so that when the time comes one of them will want to purchase this home so that it will stay in the family.”  Here’s hoping that I’m successful!