Home

There's a house where I lived from 5th grade through high school.  Not the home I was married at - no, that home is in a category all by itself.  But this house saw all four of us kids graduate from high school and move onto college.  This house saw three grandchildren visit grandparents, aunts and uncles.  This house saw more parties than I can begin to count.  A house where I lived, and visited and returned to every year, almost every Christmas. 

My parents are moving from this house at the end of March, after 22 years.  And not just down-sizing or moving to someplace more manageable.  My parents are moving to California.  From Massachusetts.  To a place so far and so foreign.  The move has been a long time coming, as odd as that seems.  My father has been commuting to California for almost two years.  It's about time they just moved out there.  But moving?  From a house where they lived for over twenty years? 

This move, though I've known about it for a long time now, is becoming so real and so weird.  Yesterday, I booked a one-way ticket North.  Today, I booked a one-way U-Haul South.  I'm flying "home" for my mother's birthday (and one last party in her house), and driving home with a truck full of furniture that can't make the move to California.  I'll probably never see that house again.

And as much as I never really thought of that house as being special to me, I guess maybe it was my home, after all.

Pouring my heart out.