It was a good house for us. It was the first house we owned together as a married couple. We bought it a few months after we married, more for the financial sense of it than anything else. We knew we would eventually need more space, but it was a great price in the right part of town, so we bought it anyway.
We had big plans for that house. We had rooms we were going to paint, things we were going to buy, upgrades we were going to do to make it feel more like us.
And then, four days after we moved in, I found out I was pregnant. Almost as soon as we moved in, I felt the clock ticking towards the end of our time in that home. When out-of-town guests visited, for the first few months, they slept in Reagan's room, while Reagan slept in a bassinet by our bed. As he got bigger, it became more and more tricky to accommodate everyone. Within six months, I was thinking about our next house, already feeling the restrictions of a two-bedroom home.
We had been in the house a little over a year when we started talking about adoption, and then the clock ticked a little louder. Walls went unpainted. The gallery of photos we planned on hanging on the stairwell remained unhung. I stopped looking for things to add to our home, and started thinking about how much we were going to have to pack up, eventually.
By the time we found our current home, I had spent weeks looking at homes with our realtor. I think the official count was 37 homes I walked in and out of, not counting ones we drove to and didn't bother going in because it was the wrong neighborhood or looked too rundown or any other reason. As soon as I walked into our new house, I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt it was meant to be ours. It just felt like home.
Suddenly, the old house was just that ... the old house. We had a shiny new house, with newly-painted walls before we even moved in. We bought new furniture, and other items to make it feel more like us. We made plans for upgrades and minor renovations, like expanding our deck. Before we spent a night in the house, it was ours. I imagined Reagan running around in the backyard, I planned the bedroom for the daughter we haven't met yet, and I looked for furnishings that would add our own personal touch.
I didn't think much about the old house, even while we were still living in it while packing up boxes, and throwing out bags and bags (and bags) of items we were discarding. By the time the movers came, I barely gave a thought to what we were leaving behind.
It wasn't until a couple days later, when I dropped Reagan off with a friend and drove to the old house to do a few last-minute things, that it hit me.
This was the house where I'd lay on our old couch at night, very pregnant, because some smell made me so nauseous during my pregnancy. It's where my husband fed me apples and milk shakes at night to get me through until the next morning (when I'd sometimes have more apples and milkshakes).
This was the house where we brought Reagan home for the first time, all six lbs. of him, afraid we might break him because he was so small.
This was the house we took turns rocking and rocking and rocking him through his colic phase, when all three of us were in tears because nothing was working.
This was the house where he took his first bath, laying in his tiny little blue plastic bathtub with his arms up like he was ready to box anyone who came too close to him.
This was the house where he started to crawl, took his first steps, said his first words, said his first sentence.
This was the house where he had his first big boo-boo, when he tripped over his toddler feet and landed head-first on the concrete.
This was the house where he splashed in his kiddy pool on our patio, and ran up and down the hill behind our house until we were both worn out.
This was the house where he went from being the worst sleeping baby to the best, seemingly overnight, and would sleep for 11 hours straight, sometimes more, before waking up and saying, 'Up, please. Up, please. Up, please.'
Reagan turned one in that house, and then he turned two.
And then we moved.
He probably won't even remember the old house, except through pictures. But we will. We'll remember the great memories, and the not so great ones. We'll remember the sleepless nights, the baby giggles, the explosive diapers, and a thousand other things.
I'm glad we moved. Reagan has a yard, and trees to play in. We have more space, more room to grow, and a place to bring our little girl home.
But it was a good house for us. It was good to us. It holds some of our best, and maybe a few of our worst, memories. The walls could tell countless stories.
Goodbye, old house. You will be missed.
No comments:
Post a Comment