My parents are selling my childhood home, so forgive me while I get sentimental, but like, isn’t that my right at a time like this?
It was a smart decision. The house is too big for the two of them, too costly to heat and cool, and has too many projects that need fixing. Plus, the narrow kitchen has always been unworthy of someone that can cook as well as my mom, and dang it, she deserves better. I know that they don’t need my blessing or anything, but they totally have it. Moving out and moving on! Good for them. Good for… Good… G00—::sobs with my fist in my mouth.::
A house is just a house. I know that. The good, fun, Jonsey times can’t be confined to the corner home on Croydon street. We will make new family memories in new places. But man, every time I think about going to Texas and staying with my parents somewhere new, nostalgia hits me like a moving truck.
Because for all of its leaks, and creaks, and foundation issues, that stupid house was where it all happened for me. It was the place I longed for while watching the clock in my elementary school classroom tick in slow motion. It was the place I spent summer days making mud pies in the front yard with my big sister while we pretended to be Indian princesses. It was the place where my siblings and I gathered in one bedroom on more Christmas Eve’s than I can count. It’s where I spent many late nights in the back bedroom upstairs reading while everyone else slept. It’s where I skipped around the backyard while making up pretend stories in my head. It’s where I got my first kiss on the night of my 15th birthday. It’s where I cried on the front porch after my first break up.
That house is a hundred frustrated nights doing math homework with Dad at the kitchen table, countless Sundays listening to the Cowboy game on the TV in the den while I helped set the table for dinner, sitting on the living room floor in front of mom while she french braided my hair, and fresh baked after-school snacks.
I remember walking home from school sometime during my senior year of high school just itching to leave. So eager I was to be an independent grown-up lady living the college life. So quickly it came. And then four short years later I pulled into the driveway of that house with my golden impala loaded down with all of my belongings feeling completely lost and broken inside. As soon as I walked through the front door I knew I was home, and I wondered why I was ever so eager to leave. That house was my haven while I slowly pieced my life back together over the course of those winter months. When I packed all of my belongings back into my car and drove away the following Spring, I had a much better understanding of what I was leaving behind.
A house is just a house. I have my wonderful, loud, dog-obsessed family to thank for making that brick house on Croydon street the sanctuary it will always represent to me. And I know that as long as we have four walls and a roof to gather under, there’s no stopping the good times to be had.
