The kitchen table was a meeting where we stopped our busy lives each night and caught up. The living room was made for eating chips and salsa and watching movies. The deck held endless amounts of cook outs, ending up in hours of reminiscing. The backyard was a mini football field on Sundays. My home was the most loving, comforting, and inviting place.
The image of turning down Woodline Court and seeing that for sale sign in my yard is an image I will never forget. Although I had heard talk of moving to the lake, I never thought complete strangers could walk into my house and make an offer. That you could even put a price on something that held such memories was unfathomable to me. I didn’t know whether or not to sabotage every showing that we had or to accept that I would no longer be coming home.
I knew that it might take time, but I figured the house wouldn’t sell for a couple months. But the buyers loved the house just as much as I did, and within a week we had an offer on the house. When I heard the news it felt like the past 15 years was being ripped away from me. My parents quickly started packing up the house and I was forced to push my thoughts away.
After the accepted offer, I learned that we had three weeks to be out of the house, two of which I would be on a hiking trip in Canada. This meant I had one week left in my house, one week to pack up my room, and one week to try and pack up all the memories in this wonderful place.
When I got home from my two weeks in Canada the house was empty. Boxes had moved to the new house and we had one night left. That night, my family and I sat on the deck having one of our famous cook outs, remembering all the good times on Woodline Court. While listening to everyone’s stories, I realized that although this house was an incredible place to live for 15 years, the memories don’t lie within the house, but rather within each one of my family members.
The night turned into tears, from laughter and closure, from the now, old house. Although the kitchen table is no longer in the same kitchen, the movies in the same living room, and the football field has been moved to a new backyard the memories of my old house will forever be deep-rooted within me.