Leaving Home

I'm about to spend my last week in the house I've lived in for nearly 20 years.  It is the longest I have lived anywhere. It is the house where I raised my sons. Leaving now feels right, but it reminds me of all the other houses I've left.



I left college apartments, rented houses, the first house of my marriage, the place where my first son was born, and now this house.  The last house of my marriage, where my second son was born, and where I have many memories. 

Each leave taking is different, but they have all been steps into the unknown.  Exciting steps, but sad, too. It is too easy sometimes to focus on the "leaving" place, even when the "going to" place is a happy choice.

My first home is a place I still visit regularly. While I lived there it changed dramatically with new rooms added regularly. Since I've left little has changed.  My sons say it is like walking into a time capsule, like everything there is the way it was when I was a little girl.  They are wrong, of course, the house is not much like it was when I was growing up--a bedroom is now a dining room, a dining room a family room, but I understand their feelings, the same ones I had visiting my grandparents' home. 

My sons won't have that. They won't come back to sleep in their childhood rooms, they won't come back to walk in the same woods with their children that they did when they were children. I've been keeping the sadness at bay by staying busy, focusing on what needs to be done.  But, sometimes, it creeps up on me.  I walk through empty rooms and remember the posters and stickers that used to adorn the walls.  I look at windows and remember balls and bikes, Lego cars racing down the driveway, sleds slipping over the snow.

I have my last fire in the fireplace.  Tomorrow I'll dream about a new place, tonight I'll cry about the old.

Being Brave

Every so often someone says to me, "You are so brave."  It's a nice thing to hear, a hard thing to believe.  I think most of us (all of us?) do brave things all the time.  I remember when my younger son was learning to drive. It was winter and he was driving down a 2 lane highway.  Coming the other direction was a snowplow, a big snowplow.  The vehicles passed and I commented about how passing snowplows always made me a bit nervous; it felt like there wouldn't be enough room to get by.  He replied, "Well, Mom, passing anything makes me nervous.  I realized when  I started to drive that at any moment I would be only a few feet away from hitting another vehicle.  But, you can't let it bother you, you just have to get used to it."  Aren't we all a bit brave driving every day?  If we think too much about the responsibility, the consequences of a moment of distraction, we would never get behind the wheel.

Sure, making big life change requires some bravery.  But, everyday living does, too.