echoes

So this is it. We're listing the house tomorrow. I walked in today with bags of throw pillows I would never ordinarily buy & two chemical air fresheners since I keep reminding myself I need to view the house as no longer ours. My footsteps echo when I walk in the house. They travel up the stairs & bounce around the empty rooms. It's weird. What else echoes in this house?

Our wedding day.

Our drunken wedding night.

The day we carefully brought our little Sassy home.

Nights spent pacing around the circle of our rooms, slinging, singing, patting, crying.

Peeking over a bassinet in the living room to an angelic sleeping face.

Sleep deprived fights with yelling and crying and slamming.

The baby gate Jeff made and installed to keep little feet where we wanted them.

A tumble down the basement steps followed by racing out the door to the ER.

A rainy birthday party with 40 smiling friends & family squeezed into 900 square feet.

A brave dog with a gentle soul being tolerant despite the pain.

Hot naps I never intended to take but for the smell of a sweaty baby's head under my nose.

A golden puppy making her first footprints in the snow.

A gasp of delight that the Easter Bunny is real.

New friends that enjoy honest conversation filling my living room.

Stress-induced fights that ended in tongue-biting and laughing instead of screaming.

Gardens of tomatoes with little picking hands.

Baby sadness.

Baby joy.

New friends that feel like old, old friends.

Screaming, running, playing children that give me a headache and a heartache at the same time.



This house has held our whole family in comfort & joy, even when things didn't feel so joyful. It is here that I learned what it means to love and it's here that I was able to live in my own skin.

Much of that has been because of my friends. For the first time in my life, I found a group of friends that I've been able to laugh & cry with, and generally just be myself. I have never before had that freedom among so many dear friends at once.

I don't talk in person about the fact that I'll miss living so close, but I will. I will miss each and every friend dearly. And for the rest of my life, no matter how much time has passed since our last visit, each and every one of those friends here -- the ones that have been honest & true & let me do the same -- will have a permanent old friend place in my heart and home.

Sorry for the sappiness. The echoes are loud now.