Generations Video Biographies: The very loved house...goodbye.

Tonight is my last night to sleep in my dear little house. It is, without question, the cutest house on Maple Avenue. I have only just begun packing, though I know our move is imminent. And throughout the whole process of losing my beloved abode, I have waited for the scenario to arrive that would save me from being parted from it.

We dallied with idea of a bigger house for a few years. There are only the three of us, but we thought maybe as our son grew he'd need more room for recreation and friends and such. Last fall, when my husband saw a house for sale that he'd always admired, we did a quick test run in the real estate market to see what would happen. "What could happen?" I thought, "The real estate market is terrible." We would, at best, get a feel for what our house was worth. But it sold in just a few days and the buyers gave us our list price. In that not well-thought-out blink, I lost my house.

The superhero that would arrive and save my house has not arrived and come this Monday morning, I will say goodbye. In the nearly ten years that we were the keepers of this house, we lived generous allotments of great love and the million tender moments of watching our baby son go from being three to becoming the 5'11" 6th grader that keeps me, at once, lovingly in awe at genetics at work and in complete bewilderment as to where my baby son has gone and how he left me so quickly.

When I look out into my backyard, I can still see my three year old deep in chalk-picture mode as he lays out the universe for me across the canvas of the patio, "You see 'dis? Well, that's the lunar lander. And all that blue stuff? That's the ocean,"he tells me these things with a serious delivery and as though it is the first time this information has been disseminated ever, like, in the history of the whole world.

It is the same patch of ground where a 4 year old played baseball and then basketball and played happily on his gym set. And, too, in that very same spot, I remember seeing my best girl Scarlotta in the twinkle of a moment when I realized that something was terribly wrong with her. My gorgeous Dalmatian girl with more wisdom in her lovely noggin than most people I had known, died from bloat and a torsed stomach later that night. I came home from the animal hospital at 2 am. and I sat in the corner of the living room of my little house and cried as though I might never see the sunlight again. And soon, my fourth grader came quietly down the stairs and put his arms around me to tell me I would surely see her again in Heaven.

I still can see squirt fights with the hose and trampoline jumping with our dogs. And the garage, well, there I see the hours that I spent vacuuming my car behind those doors. I had lost my baby, a miscarriage, and that little garage with the french doors and flower boxes is where I fled to cry. The vacuuming could cover the sound of my weeping. And the side gate? Well that's where little Minnie and Lily arrived to our home after their long trip from a North Carolina shelter, shaking and covered in blood because they had Parvo virus. I scooped them up and brought them into my cool, quiet basement. I bathed them and wrapped them both in blankets and took turns holding them both because they were so frightened. In those years I acquired four new dogs and lost three, learned how to make crepes, lost two pregnancies, and watched my baby learn to ride a bike. I made exactly 9 Halloween costumes for my son and gave out candy in costumes of my own. I opened and closed the doors of that house a thousand times going in and out and now it has come down to this...only tonight and only a few more hours to come and go. Only this brief coming time for a glance backward to remember how real it was...every little memory, listening to my little one singing or just the relief of walking through the front door after a long trip away.

It occurred to me that this little well-loved house, the one where we grew dreams and watched our child grow, was precisely so tenderly cared for because of all the love that we had in it. Now I am turning it over to someone else. It will have its next chapter. My little house will care for a new couple. They have three dogs. I hope they will love it. The walls of this house are solidly full of the happiness and life we lived here. They don't know yet what a warm place they've come to, to live.