Reminiscing

Sparrow,

My new house has been found and purchased and the papers have been signed making it official; I’m moving. My “physical” journey is becoming a reality and, to commemorate, I’ve spent the week packing.  The house is starting to look bare and the pile of garbage needing to go to the curb is growing.  Odds and ends are left at the end of the driveway each evening in the hope that they will be taken and repurposed. I’m leaving my life behind, packing it up, throwing it away, and gifting it. Oh, I know, I know, theses “things” aren’t really my “life”, and, in actual fact, leaving them is freeing.  But, as the house begins to echo, as it did when I sneezed this morning (to Fledgling’s delight), I’m left with a sense of loss because this is the last home we shared together as a family and, poignantly, with my oldest daughter.

You can say the same now that you’ve packed up and your oldest has flown from the nest can’t you, Sparrow? You, too, packed up your life and, at the same time, your final days of living under the same roof with your oldest. I wonder if you, like me, relived memories as you boxed and emptied each room.  There’s the coffee stain my oldest hid from me until it was too late to get it out and there’s a gouge in the wall of her old room from some carelessness or other. I look in the yard and I can see her lined up for pictures with her friends in their prom gowns or the limo in the driveway ready to whisk them away.  Do you remember that day, Sparrow? It seems like a lifetime ago, now.

I think a lot about these young ladies, these first born children of ours that are now women. I think about them both routinely as I’m packing up. Our girls will visit us, I know. They will ease themselves back into our spaces and make themselves comfy, filling every available surface with their things, personalities and demands, reminding us of old times. Hopefully, our children will always know that they have a place with us, but will they feel like it’s their home? I don’t think so and that saddens me. We, Fledgling and I, will be a unit and she, eldest born, will be a guest.  Oh, I know, home is where the heart is, home is where the family is, blah, blah, blah. Really, it’s not the same, is it?  

The bright side, Sparrow, and I’m sure you revel in this much as I do, the bright is that the dramas that naturally occur in the lives of these adult female children of ours, these dramas no longer occur under our roofs and we can breathe a sigh of relief over that, at least!

Love Always, Red Bird