You don’t really think about it while you’re in it – what will happen when your family grows up and it’s time to leave the family home.  In the beginning, you’re just excited to make a home for your family. One that fits your family’s special lifestyle. The decisions are endless and important. Maybe the most important thing about this is that you understand that you are not only creating a framed structure. You are defining what they will understand to be a “home” – a place of safety and warmth. A landing where they know they will be loved, nurtured and secure. This is no small endeavor.

So you suffer through renovations that displace almost everything. Like leaving you with a temporary bathroom pitched in the middle of your kitchen shielded from view only by a plastic tarp. You spend hours scanning design magazines for ideas to decorate your kids rooms so they perfectly match their individual personalities. You really make it YOUR home.

Over the years you modify as they, and you, grow.  Basketball nets replace tricycles, soccer nets replace swing sets, big beds replace cribs, books replace block puzzles, band posters replace Winnie the Pooh artwork, crayons replace finger-paints, video games replace legos.  The list of the way your family changes over the years is endless, each one altering the way your days flow.  Some are enormous, like bringing in a piano for an emerging love of music. Some are minute, like the change to a sippy cup from a bottle – although that can be enormous in its own way. Whatever it may be it all happens within the walls of your home.

These are the things that pass so quickly you almost don’t realize it because you are in it – struggling to keep up and give your family all that you can. Plus honestly, in the moment, you think it will never end. That in some way time has frozen within the youth of your family.

As your lives unfold, the days stretch almost blindly into years when suddenly you realize that, holy shit, tomorrow is your last high school graduation. That everyone has another place to be.  A place where they will independently create their own future.  A future grounded in the past that you built together – that you led.  A past that you tried so hard to make secure, giving them all the tools you could to pursue their dreams no matter how impossibly far off you imagined them to be.  

Leaving this place means leaving your history, the birth of your babies, first steps, first injuries, first loves, tears, laughter, holidays, every day. You’ve raised them here with love and pride and now it’s time to step forward.

You never thought it would happen.  No one ever does.  Yet here it is and not one of you is prepared.   No one really knows what to do except resist.  And certainly no one is happy about it.

There are those rare people who think it’s not a big deal.  It’s just bricks and mortar after all.  People came before you and they will come after you.   The truth you all share so deeply lies within you – not the house.  And there is some truth to that.  Your memories are yours and no one can take them away or replace them.  

But there is also great truth that lies steadfastly within those bricks.  All the history that every room has seen and heard is indelibly imprinted on those walls.  I often wonder what would they say if they could speak – what would their observations be.  How would they sum it all up. But of course they can’t and so you try to pretend that a wall is just a wall, there will be others.

This time also brings out a great sense of propriety.  It’s your house after all.  Surely no one else could really live there.   As you hear potential new owners talk of new appliances and countertops, fresh paint and maybe even an extra room you are angry and want to say, “no it’s just perfect as is”!  Their words are just as hurtful as you would imagine.  No one wants to see what happens next in that space.  Because for you the rooms will always belong to you and your family.  

But time has diligently marched on and so must you.  Children have become smart, independent young adults.  Parents have changed too, becoming older and hopefully wiser.  They may be excited to reduce the size of their space and begin their next phase. They are likely also apprehensive and, for me, flat out scared – being pitched out of your familiar backyard into the unknown.  I have to admit that there is a very big part of me that would turn back the hands of time in a heartbeat if given the chance.  What I would give to bandage a skinned knee, nap with my newborn on my chest, watch my 1,000th episode of Arthur while being fed goldfish by my toddler.  But that has passed and there is no repeat button.

I remember when we moved into our family home. We renovated so that it would better suit our family as it grew.  When we opened up the back wall to add rooms we found an old calendar from 1916.    We were sure that it was put there when the house was built by that first family, as a time capsule of sorts.  I remember being in awe of that little calendar, imagining who did it and what it was like the moment they sealed it in.  We have framed it and will take it with us to honor the past – theirs and ours.

So.  We pack, we paint, we fix holes left by family photos and we prepare for sale making it look like no one lives there.  That is maybe the worst part.  Making it look like no one has ever lived there – as if it’s just an empty shell.  But all of you know the truth – that in those walls, embedded in the structure, is your family – its spirit, youth and its growth.   No paint can remove the fingerprint of your family. It will always be your home.

What you can’t think about is the last time you close the door and drive off.   For me, I am fairly certain that I will not be able to look back or maybe even ever drive by again.  No matter how bright the next phase might be.  There is nothing that will replace this time or the memories you have made in this space.  You just hope that whatever is next will at least be as treasured as all that has been – here on Willard Avenue.