Following a 6-hour packing marathon on Friday night, we spent about 10 hours coordinating the movers on Saturday and another few hours unpacking and cleaning -- thanks for the help Babs and QG! Yesterday was spent recovering and trying to fit out our closet (which, alas, is smaller than our old one). But we're here and (almost) everything made it in one piece. So far, our only casualty has been a glass cake stand, which was infrequently used and easily replaceable. For me at least, moving has a way of making everything seem so temporary, so impermanent. It's such an odd thing to see everything you own packed tightly into one (not-so-big) moving truck. Suddenly, it's just "stuff" -- and I'm left with a big empty house that feels a whole lot less like home and a whole lot more like just a place where I used to live. A house that, on Friday, will no longer be mine. The only evidence that we'd ever been there will be some paint and a few extra scuffs in our soft pine floors. I haven't yet met the future owner of our place, but I wonder what she's like and what the house will come to mean to her. I do hope she comes to appreciate and love it though; after all, it was a great home to us.
I thought in some ways that I'd feel more nostalgic for the old house -- and I do, but I suppose I'm at the age where there's more looking forward than looking back, and so I tend to embrace change with the optimism of youth. But when I allow myself to look back, I know that this home was an important milestone for Dave and me: it was our first house...and it was a huge learning experience. For example, I remember about 6 months after we first moved in we noticed that ants had invaded our kitchen. Up until that point the thought that we'd need regular pest control hadn't even occurred to us. In our defense, Dave and I had only ever lived in our parents' homes, dormitories, and apartments. What did we know of the regular maintenance and upkeep that owning your own home entails? So in many ways I will look back on our old house as the place where Dave and I really grew up. Where we learned what it meant to own a home, how live on our own, and how to live together.
...and in with the new!
So today I'm staying at home to settle in a bit more, get my bearings...and wait on the alarm guy. While much of our stuff is still in boxes scattered throughout the house, it's already starting to feel a bit like home. I look into the empty upstairs' bedrooms, the vacant family room and I wonder: what's next? Will this room someday be a nursery? What important milestones will be celebrated in this dining room? What will the people building next door be like? Will they become our friends? So, while this place doesn't yet feel completely like home, it most certainly feels like my future.
{P.S. - For some wonderfully poignant musings on a recent post of mine responding to a color quiz in House Beautiful, decorating, and what either one has to do with the more important aspects of life, please visit Gannet Girl's Search the Sea.}
