The House That Held Me

I’ve always been fascinated by time. How the hours that we dread and hours we spend excited to get somewhere both linger on forever. How minutes of joy and laughter slip away the quickest; the highly anticipated, exciting events flashing before our eyes. How days drag on, but weeks, months, and years seem to fly by.

I spent my entire childhood and adolescence fixated on the next minute. Convinced I should be older than I was. Hoping and praying to be older faster. Wishing there were more candles on my birthday cake or more inches to my height. Wishing that middle school would be over, or excited for high school to end, or just ready to finally have a job and be done with school. The problem with constantly wishing the years away is that you always get what you wish for.

Suddenly, I’m 27 standing in a room peppered with packed boxes and buckets. This room was once filled with my grandmother’s dining room set and china cabinet. For years, this room held some of the most fragile things in my parent’s house. Now, it barely looks like a table and chairs ever collected dust here. Now, the most fragile thing in this room is me as I mosey through what feels like a graveyard of memories and moments that I wished myself out of.

I’ve only lived in 4 houses my entire life. For some, that may sound like a lot, but I didn’t spend much time in the first two and the fourth is the house that Andrew and I own now. The third house though, I lived in for 16 years and my parents owned for 18. The third house is this house, the one now packed into boxes and cars and stripped of my childhood artifacts and memorabilia. The memories made in this house, in the past 18 years, pale in comparison to the other houses.

This house held us for so many years. It held playdates, family dinners, Christmases, getting ready for proms and first dates, countless hours of school projects, birthday and graduation parties, sleepovers, and college acceptance letters. It is the house that caught me when I came flailing home after my first semester at USC. It is the house where Andrew asked for my parents’ blessing to marry me.

After 18 years, this house was bursting at the seams; echoes of laughter bounced off of the walls, the floors dulled by dancing feet, the stair treads worn from races up and down them. It held us in times of heartbreak and loss and love and excitement. It held us, just tight enough.

Maybe that’s the thing about houses that are bursting at the seams; maybe one house can only hold so much. Maybe a house can only hold so much wished away time before it is wished away too.

I always thought it would be exciting for my parents to move. I felt that they deserved a new house with new floors and new walls and new stairs; a new adventure. But I never could have anticipated the ache my heart would feel as I stood in our empty kitchen or as I walked in our backyard for the last time. Through tears, I collected blooms from my mom’s rose bushes and magnolia tree to press. I snipped strands of ivy to propagate and hopefully plant in my own yard. I flailed around the yard taking any piece I could with me.

I drove away from our house for the last time that day. Flooded with a boundless combination of grief, joy, gratitude, and sadness. A testament to the joyful years of childhood and adulthood that I spent there. A testament to all the love held there.

Change in most forms, comes with some degree of discomfort. Even when we think we are prepared for change, we sometimes are not.

I pray that every house my family and I ever live in is left that full. I hope every house feels that hard to leave, that they are all bursting at the seams from holding so much.

Love always,