Home is Where You Remember to Drive to After Work

In the past month, I have made a trip to Boise, moved house, and made a trip to Portland. I’m exhausted. My lower back hurts. I’ve got a lot on my mind.

If there is one thing that moving from a 3-bedroom house to a 2-bedroom apartment teaches you, other than the fact that downsizing is good for the soul, it’s that needing to get rid of tons of stuff will expose neuroses you didn’t know you had. Also, storage units are expensive.

The past year has been really challenging. Just read any blog posts I’ve written in the past ten months if you need to get caught up. I also realized something else really significant during the move: the fourteen years we lived in Willow Glen cover a LOT of major life experiences. We were ten months in one house, and then thirteen years and two months in the one we just moved from. Fourteen years TO. THE. DAY. (That day being Valentine’s Day, coincidentally.)

Standing in the echo-y empty living room of the house, it hit me. Both my parents had visited us and slept in that house. And an aunt. And all my siblings at one time or another. Plus two of their partners and all three of my sister’s daughters. It was the house where I brought my son home from the hospital. That house had seen late-night feedings, nosebleeds, vomit, diaper changes, potty training, and checking for concussions. Several of those. (Kid’s got a hard head.)

The walls of that house witnessed me finding out my Dad had died. Coming to grips with my son’s autism diagnosis. Finding out Mom was sick. And then learning Mom was gone. Those same walls looked on as I earned my Master’s degree online. And as I taught online classes and participated in weekly video broadcasts. Song parodies and videos. Helping raise another person’s child. Taking in her boyfriend. Telling them they had to go.

Meals with family and friends. Christmas trees and cookies for Santa. Annual school portraits. Arguments over the dumbest of things. The only home my son had ever known.

Don’t get me wrong; I wanted to move. I suppose it would be nice to be able to come up with a down payment on a home we could own, but this is Silicon Valley, so I’ll settle for a pool I don’t have to clean and grounds I don’t have to keep. We’ve traded nearby train tracks and the 280 freeway for light rail and 17. We’re not as close to the airport. We’re a tiny bit closer to the mountains and the ocean beyond. We almost overlook the Los Gatos Creek Trail, and we hear the bells of St. Lucy’s on a regular basis. We have all our own furniture, and eventually we’ll put stuff up on the walls. I like it.

But after the year I’ve had, it just feels like one more fork in the road of life where I’ve had to decide how to proceed . . . and be prepared to live with the consequences of my choice. I definitely wanted out of that house. But I am not used to this new home yet. It will come.