A Letter To Our House

While normally I would have a thoughtful tribute for Remembrance Day, I can say with confidence that I don't have the brain matter to do that right now.

With the remaining brain cells I have left, I can only focus on one thing. We move tomorrow. There is only one thing I could write about today....

A Letter To Our House
Dear Little House,
I must admit, when I first met you, it was not love at first sight. But I'm sure you thought the same of me. I didn't bring much to the table and you must have cringed when you heard some of the ideas I was developing.

With your little green roof and your orange brick, you looked like a big peach sitting without benefit of shade on the quiet little street. The back patio was made coarsely from masonry material and therefore chipping away. The single little tree on the south side of the back yard could have snapped off in a strong wind.

But your were OUR first home. You are the home where I learned how to be a wife and eventually a mother. We became a family here with you. You tolerated our dogs and friends with kids as crazy as ours and with every transformation we put you through, you seemed to get better with age.

We planted trees to give you some privacy and shade; designed gardens to enhance your features and eventually, threw on an addition that allowed us to stay with your 8 years longer than we would have otherwise. We made you a little cottage home.

The Big Guy and I have looked at houses almost from the time we moved in to you. You never gave us a moment's grief and yet we spent 17 years looking for something else. If the sale never happened, we would have been fine to stay with you. We would have continued to make improvements, and reinvent you. But this is where we part.

Thank you for being our shelter. Thank you for being the frame for some of my fondest memories - and some of the more difficult ones. I will never forget the feeling I had when we brought Second Born Son home from the hospital in a brutal snow storm. "We are HOME!" I will never forget the indigation both boys had when a neighbor's party left evidence on your front lawn. I was so proud of how they felt - frustration, anger, indignation. They know we took care of you, and they learned how to value their things by taking care of you too.

After tomorrow, I won't come by even regularly - I don't believe in looking back like that, but when I drive by, I will wonder if the mural is still in First Born Son's room, if your new owners love the bench in the back hall as much as I did, if they can appreciate the back yard for what it was and is now?

I hope and pray they live as happy a life there as we have had, and that they come to love you as much as we do.

May your eaves always drain downhill,

Sarah