I cannot help but be a bit reflective as our family begins its next journey in another home in another new town. In the past nine years we have lived in five different states (Ohio, New Mexico, Oregon, Indiana, and North Carolina) and six different cities/towns (Cuyahoga Falls, Las Cruces, Portland, Camby, Charlotte, and now Denver). Each of those experiences has left an indelible mark on the six of us and has been a clear marking of closing and opening a new chapter in our lives with each home we have inhabited.
As we spend the last three days in this home with the bare essentials (we began moving our stuff into the new house last Friday when we got the keys) I find myself going over the different experiences this home has been ground zero for. I also find myself reflecting on the difficulties that we have incurred while living in this home and in this part of town.
I know that there will be things that I will miss about this house as there are things I miss about every house we have ever lived in, but there are also things that I will not miss (just as there are things to varying degrees that I do not miss about our previous houses). I know for sure that I will miss the birds that we have surrounding our house. Our current home in Charlotte backs up to woods outside the property line and is a very wooded lot itself. The amount of birds that sing in the trees and fly by is immense, and their distinct sounds have been such a large part of my life here. I know that moving forward (into a new development with only baby trees spread out among the houses) this will not be the case. I will miss the vibrant green hues that the leaves of the trees provide. I will miss watching the seasons come and go right from my own backyard. I will miss our front porch too, but not nearly as much as our back deck. Our deck is where I wrote my grandfather his nearly weekly letters for months. It is where I would go to recharge my batteries and restore myself to partial sanity when I was on the verge of losing my shit. I will miss having fires in our wood burning fireplace. I will miss the large living room windows. I will miss our very kind neighbor who has been such a sweetheart time entire time we have lived here. To some degree, I will miss our neighborhood.
But....there are things that I know I will not miss. I will not miss how dark this house is constantly because of the trees surrounding the property. Some rooms require lights 24 hours a day because they sun rarely touches them. 3 of our 4 upstairs bedrooms are so dark that it is hard to tell when it is morning in the spring and summer because the leaves have bloomed on their respective trees. I will not miss how this lovely home has not been taken care of over the years, and now needs a ton of work it will never get because the money it would require to restore it is not worth the investment to the rental company who would have to pay for those repairs. I will not miss the windows that do not open, the kitchen appliances that do not fully work, the screens that do not fit the windows properly thus letting in bugs on the ones we can open. I will not miss the popcorn ceiling that is falling down in the kitchen. I will not miss the bathroom sink that leaks. I will not miss the sound of gun shots heard in the neighborhood and the ones that were fired on our street.
As I look back over the last two years I think about all of the good memories. I also think about the things that I could have done better as a mother, wife, and homemaker. What did I let slip through the cracks? Why did that happen? What can I do in the new house to prevent it from happening there? I will not lie, there are definitely areas of homemaking/motherhood that I have not been so successful at here these last two years, and I am nervous that I won't be able to fix them moving forward. I am hoping that this fear is exactly what propels me to make sure these bad habits/routines done continue in the next chapter of our lives.
Only time will tell, I suppose. For now though, I plan on spending the rest of this week reflecting on all of our experiences here - both the good and the not so good. It is the only way I will be able to fully close this chapter and open the next one.
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