(Today marks three weeks since we arrived at our new home in Massachusetts. More on THAT to come, because hoo boy. But for right now, a surprisingly/not super surprisingly hard one to write. I began this post the week before we moved but had to stop because…I had to stop. Stay tuned. Thanks in advance. Buckle up. Keep hydrating. And, you know, wear a mask.)
An open letter to my home:
Hey home, I know I’ve said some things in the past- funny, weird, angry, surreal things- about your inner and outer workings but really, I want to thank you.
When we met you, we were stupid. Oh my goodness, we were so incredibly stupid. We knew nothing. (I’m so very glad we knew nothing. How does anyone ever choose to buy a house? Being in charge of everything that needs to go in and out and up and down while paying boggling amounts of money? The less foreknowledge, the better.)
When we met you, you were sad. (Listen, if that many of my appendages had been bruised, broken, or plain ol’ ripped out, I’d be sad too.) So much sad had happened in these walls before we ever busted in with huge ideas and spicy red paint. I said that to P.J. that first day; this home feels sad. We can do a good job. We can make it happy.
Can you believe how many kids we brought into this place? Or how many cats?
You held us as we held our first newborn, giddy with terror and love. You vibrated with us as we held dance parties at dusk, at first with wobbly toddlers and then with over-confident tweens. Movie marathons and book beds and Saturday morning pancakes (with chocolate chips and classic cartoons) and game nights and retro cocktails in a postage-sized backyard you couldn’t tell us wasn’t a grand expanse of Grounds.
We glossed you up and secured you down. New doors! Porches! Windows for days. Bathrooms and bookshelves and walls that never let in even one rodent, not ever again. (Ever.)
Heck, we did so much, so quickly, and in such a questionable way that I ended up writing a book about it. I could’ve written two books about it.
It would still have barely scratched the surface.
When we moved in, I first looked at the empty dirt pit in the backyard and then next at P.J., confidently telling him that he could do “something.” (After all, he was from the Midwest. Aren’t people from the Midwest natural thing-growers?) Luckily, he was also still naive and shell-shocked enough to believe that something could be created from absolutely nothing.
Gosh, and he did. An unassuming pear tree- a twiglet, really- planted during our firstborn’s first weeks, grew to tower over the roof in a weirdly short amount of time. Soft green grass carpeted the yard from fence to fence, and fragrant blossoms gracefully lined our fences; lavender, lilies, lilacs planted for my 30th birthday, a magnolia named Jane, and tangled roses galore. The yard between our back door and and the small detached garage was tiny, but it was just the right size to hold a baby blanket for an infant blinking beneath an oversized sunhat.
Later, it was perfect for a sprinkler and tentative skips through the droplets with a little sister.
Eventually a baby brother cannonballed his way into our lives- and into a much bigger kiddie pool.
We flipped that same pool on its side and watched projected movies, laid under the stars (when the stars felt generous enough to be seen within the city limits), and dreamed away entire evenings around a fire pit and under artfully strung (and super-duper low) bistro lights hung from your narrow back porch.
Nearby, we had neighbors we adored, restaurants we’ll probably always dream about (looking at you, Ixcateco), the one sledding “hill” in Chicago’s city proper, and so much stuff. Even when that stuff boxed us in or kept us up- and there’s most likely a car alarm still going off at Cullom and Troy, amiright?- we felt safe within your walls. We felt at home within your walls.
My Dad loved you. I love you so very much because of how hard my Dad loved you. I love that he gave you your ceiling fans and base boards and a startling number of your interior doors. (He loved how much your front yard smelled like Colombian roasted chicken, courtesy of the restaurant on the corner.)
The night my Dad died, he visited me here in my half-sleep. I think maybe he was saying goodbye to you, too.
(He always did like to see a job to completion.)
We’re going to live in another place that my Dad loved. I think that’s really the only way I could ever leave you; by choosing somewhere else that my Dad helped turn into a home. I’m pretty sure we’ll be wildly happy there as well. I know it sounds braggy, but we’re kind of terrific at finding perfect homes.
Yep- occasionally haunted, hilariously mysterious, perfectly perfect homes.
Early in our “living at Troy Street” journey, my Mom famously said, “Rome wasn’t built in a day…but Troy is certainly being rehabbed on a deadline.”
I think we did a good job.
I think we made you happy.
And now it’s time for us to fill another home with late night music and early morning snuggles, and learn the language of somewhere else’s sunny windows and corners filled with possibilities and doors that occasionally stick in weather. I hope you understand. We found you a wonderful family who already loves you and whom, I think, you’ll really love, too. We’ve shared with them all of your quirks and super powers. They’ll figure out even more of your secrets and find ways to make you their own. We have to let them.
They get to have that be their job, now.
I hope you understand.
(How does anyone ever choose to leave a house?)
Thanks for the past eleven years, Troy Street. Thanks for making us grownups and capturing in amber a chapter of our lives we couldn’t possibly have done anywhere else, not like that, not in so wonderful a way.
You did a good job.
You made us happy.
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