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.