It is official. With keys in hand we are now home owners. Excited, yes. Happy, yes. Motivated for remodeling, yes. Super sad, yes. It is a slew of emotions. Bitter sweet for me actually. Everywhere we have lived we have made our home and every time we have moved I have cried my eyes out. Rental or not, these four walls have been home to our hearts for 4 years.
I remember the very first moment I saw this house. Bill had been living here for a month before I moved from Tucson to SLC. He was sitting on the front porch with a beer in his hand, anxiously awaiting my arrival on that warm August evening. Although he never said, I think he was curious (maybe a little nervous) for my reaction to our new living quarters. Honestly, at first I wasn’t too sure how I felt about it. But it quickly felt comfortable. Just like home.
The basement in this old, creaky house smells like moth balls and dirt, there are leaky facets and mismatched flooring, it is drafty during the winter, our dining room ceiling is falling apart and ends up on our dining table every time we run the swamp cooler, we live on a busy street with a street light I have coined “the sun” right outside our bedroom window and I forget that this is home with every complaint. There have been moments I couldn’t wait to move. To own our own home so we could make it truly ours and fix leaky sinks and crumbling plaster. But as moving becomes a reality I am sad to pack up and leave this old house.
It is filled with happiness and fabulous memories. Our first years as a married couple, the first place I have lived besides Arizona, our first garden. Walks to the park, friends and family visits. Blackberry bushes and pear trees. We celebrated becoming debt free while living here. Not to mention how much personal change and growth I have experienced while under this roof, crumbling or not.
There will not be a dry eye in the house during the month of September. At least neither of mine. And as I mentally and physically prepare for this move, I know that any where we go we will make a home, just as we have done in the past. This time it will be even better because it will be ours. Besides a home is really about what’s inside the four walls anyhow. And I plan on taking all of that with me. Luckily, memories and love don’t need to be boxed.
A Pinch of Opinion 