Home and Heart

I walked through the house one more time, but this time I was ready to leave. 

I’m a look-forward kind of person. I love to plan, organize and imagine what something will be like in the future. When my husband and I were engaged, I planned our wedding, but I also planned our first home, a 2-bedroom student apartment. I actually drew a rough blueprint and sketched where each piece of collected furniture would go. 

My forward-thinking works another way too. When we had 5 children ranging in age from 3 to 12, my husband was offered a job out of state. Before we knew it was right to accept, I sorrowed over the possible loss of the home where I brought my twins from the hospital, where my three older children ate snacks at the bar. I felt the loss before we’d even decided to leave.

We’d built the house in a quiet neighborhood near good schools. We chose every door knob, window covering, faucet, paint color, flower and shrub. The pantry door trim became a grid of pencil lines and dates, marking each child’s height. The trim was not only a record of growth, but a study in time.

Our fingerprints were everywhere in that house.  

After we had decided to move and before we’d even signed with a realtor, I walked through each room and watched the memories play out. 

• On the front porch, my 2-year-old twins jump and yell as soon as they hear the school bus engine rumble. The bus driver stops, honks the horn and opens the door for my school-age kids to hop off.
• On the driveway, I see my kids playing roller hockey and basketball.
• In the breakfast nook, I watch a thousand meals, friendship bracelets and homework go down.
• In the living room, I see little kids rushing through piano practice and our family gathered for scriptures.
• In the family room, big and little people are sprawled on the floor and snuggled on the couch, watching TV, playing games and reading.
• The playroom is filled with toys, and for a few days, 2 portable kiddie toilets.
• My bedroom is the scene of nursing 2 babies. Or where a scared child brought a blanket to lay on the floor near me during a storm.
• The stairs have kids running up and down, my husband carrying a sleeping child and the twins sliding down on their bellies.

• 

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I mourned as I lived the last few months in the place. But my husband didn’t handle it this way. He managed through the move and went on.

The house sold a few months after we left for the new job, so we traveled back to pass the home we built to a new family.

We walked past the azaleas we’d planted, through the front door of our unoccupied house. Without our things, — and equipped with a new perspective from living somewhere else we loved — it felt empty. It wasn’t just vacant rooms, the void was bigger than that.

But my husband took his time in each room. From our daughter’s second story bedroom, he looked out on the backyard with the grass worn around home plate and the yellow fencepost that marked the foul line. He could still see our son pitching the baseball to another son in the batter’s box, our daughter running the bases with the little ones trailing behind. He’d never play a game there again. For the first time, he felt the loss. 

A different way to grieve. Both have their hardships and gifts. One way, you get to live in the present and enjoy it, no questions asked. Another way, you see and feel the sweetness in real time.

My husband closed the door and we settled our children into the car. We drove away. Away and forward. Forward to the life we’d built in a new place with new friends and new sites. Home.

The new house had no room for a baseball diamond in the backyard. But the old house wasn’t on a cul-de-sac filled with friends in every house and a large sports field nearby.

Years have passed. When I look back, I remember how much I loved that stage of life. I see our home, although sacred to us at the time, was nothing more than a setting. A place where we made memories and built relationships. Not our one and only home. 

I’ve created and left enough homes to understand. The real receptacle is in my heart. The photos are in my books and the memories are in my heart. The relationships continue and are all around me. There will be other homes that are sacred to us. 

The thing is loss creates space. Room for other and different and new. If we hadn’t left our Oklahoma home, we would not have experienced Illinois, Utah, North Dakota, Ohio and California. We would have missed loving new places.

This month my husband and I moved into a new home. We’ve been renovating it to make it ours. Already it’s a place that’s sacred to us. The place we were meant to be now. It feels right. It feels peaceful. 

Some people stay in one place for a lifetime. Not us. We love the roads we’ve traveled ane where they’ve brought us.

Change can be scary. But change can give too. We are filled with memories and experiences and friends we’ve gathered in 4 time zones.  

I sometimes think of the middle of life as life halved. Look forward and look back. I look back a lot lately. I think I’m trying to find meaning in the past and trying to understand the lessons. I think we’re meant to learn from history, especially our own. I think we’re meant to tell the stories.