I find it interesting that the actual transaction for selling a house is called closing. Because the front door to my parents’ house, the one that anchored our family over four decades, is closing to us this week. It started me thinking about other doors I’ve known. In recent years, we’ve gone from a midwest victorian door to a northwest contemporary door to an English castle door to our Scottish Hobbit door.
The truth is that most of those changes have led to wonderful new friends, life-changing experiences, and incredible memories. Generally, I’m a glass-half-full girl, so I’m grateful for all the places those doors have taken me. But I’ve learned a few things along the way.
Close the door.
Leave the pieces that weigh too much. Really. I’m getting older and my back isn’t all it used to be, so moving with just the things I’d grab if the house was about to burn down (the dog, the laptop, Grandmother’s silver soup ladle, and the hard drive with the stored photos I keep swearing I’ll upload to the cloud) is freedom.
Open the door.
Take the pieces that don’t weigh a thing. Really. I’m getting older and my head isn’t all it used to be, so taking only the memories (good friends, good times, good years) is riches.
Use the right door.
It’s okay to be human. And that means I cry when I miss friends, swear when I get lost (or don’t know which dry cleaner to use, or I have to find a new place to do my hair, or it’s Tuesday), and vow catastrophic vengeance the like of which the new city has never encountered if I have to go one more day without getting the internet installed.
And finally, if one more door closes on a piece of my past I used to call home…
For the love of all that’s holy, don’t let me write another one of these maudlin, cliche-choked sentimental blog posts.
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Barb Taub 
I don’t think there is ever a good time to lose your childhood home. My parents decided to sell mine the weekend I moved away from home. They exchanged a lovely Victorian house near the shore, for a horrible concrete shack.
I survived, but I still shed tears when I pass the place. They sold it in 1977. Sigh.
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I’m so sorry about your childhood home, and I hope that your parents managed to create new and wonderful memories even from a concrete shack.
Your comment made me think of what I have to pass on to my own children. After keeping it for over twenty years, we had to admit that neither we nor any of our children will ever live in that old midwest victorian. (Or in the other houses we haven’t quite managed to sell off yet…) But I look at the pictures of us making new traditions and memories in the Seattle house, or the castle in England, or now in the Hobbit house here in Scotland, and I hope they will be every bit as precious.
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You and they will have wonderful memories from thee too.
As for my parents next home — we were all grow ups so it wasn’t the same. But it was theirs and they were happy there as long as they lived. That was hard to argue with!
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You do heart break so well. Probably my favourite post of yours to date.
Amanda
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Since my father was an engineer in the days before his tribe reached their promised land, Silicon Valley, we moved around a lot when I was growing up. But early on my parents found a house they liked, and they simply bought that exact house (or had it built) everywhere they moved. So while I can’t claim that final house where they spent their last four decades as my childhood home, it was THE place where we celebrated winter holidays, summer vacations, graduations, and the arrivals of my nine siblings’ partners plus their all-important 30+ grandchildren and great-grandchildren. My brother sent a picture taken a few weeks ago as he and other sibs finished clearing out the old place and toasted my parents with one last Tom Collins. Now another lucky family gets to start making memories there.
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I still drive by my childhood home when out on Long Island to take a glimpse of it and remember all the good times there. Moving on in life is sad but sometimes necessary and the memories wiill always be there.
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I’m just getting to this post and it brought back memories. My father was career US Army and we moved around a lot. However, we did have a home base in PA, about 13 miles outside of Pittsburgh. It’s where my parents met and grew up. Both sets of grandparents, some cousins, and my parents’ childhood friends lived there at the time we lived there. Now, many of those folks have passed on.
My parents eventually moved out to CA when I was much older. I can’t remember the exact years, but I believe they were here by the time I was 30. If I ever want an outside glimpse of that house or my grandparents’ homes, I use Google Maps. A glimpse is all it is though. Memories are more than that.
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I went on Zillow with my father to look at his family’s house on the south side of Chicago. He was so upset at the way it had been changed since his boyhood (although to my current eyes the changes were all huge improvements). So I think you’re right… you can look back, but you can’t ever really go back.
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