The home of my child-hood, no, the home of my life is being sold. Soon I won't be welcome on a spot of land that I always knew I would be welcome on.
Usually, when such a thing occurs, it is surrounded by deeper tragedy. Usually it is the result of the death of a parent, or another natural disaster, or some great political upheaval.
For my, my parents have gotten too beaten by life to be able to manage it, or to some extent to manage themselves. They are moving to a nursing home/assisted living center. Strokes, diabetes, age have slowly worn away at my father. Full time nursing of him is wearing away at my mother. So for their sake they are moving. Yet the medical bills have left them with little. If they let the bank take the home and the land, then they can be considered poor enough for Medicaid and the VA to take care of them.
So the home where I grew up is going away.
I first was introduced to these 6 acres of land when I was 8. I officially moved away when I was 28. Now at almost 48 I have to let go.
It was where I proposed to my wife, and where my grandmother passed away.
It was where I and/as heroes strange and brave battled ten thousand goblins, trolls, and ogres in stories I've yet to finish.
Its where I knew I wanted to write, and where I learned to sell.
Its where I thought out my philosophies, and worried about my religion.
Its home in ways that every place else I ever lived could never quite be.
Memories, more vivid than reality, start here. Always they start here.
And futures, more sure than history, were planned here.
Perhaps that is why I am sad. All those futures I imagined walking through the woods of this place have yet to pass. My fear, and my laziness, and my surrender to mediocrity and a stable paycheck have kept me from obtaining them.
I now understand a bit more all those stories about people so in love with/in touch with some land that the can't leave. I know how hard it was for the immigrants to flock here, and how easy it was for people facing obliteration to stay put in their safe, eternal, homes.
Eternal? I am definitely feeling a sense that something eternal has been lost. I know its not eternal. But for me it was supposed to be. We need a word for that, for something that is not always was and always will be, but that is for the length of my life always this way and must be so until I'm gone. Me-ternal. The Cubs don't win the pennant is a Me-ternal situation. American supremacy is a Me-Ternal situation. That this spot on the earth is a place of safety and home is me-ternally true.
Except its not.
Sunday evening I will sit upon the hill, overlooking the pond, where one hundred thousand fireworks have lit the sky on hot July nights. If I am lucky, my wife will be with me, right where I proposed and she accepted. If I am truly lucky my son will sit on the other side and I will tell him the stories of every inch of that place. I will describe the villainous geese and the cantankerous grand mother, the adventurous explorations, the financial plans of that old collapsing barn, and the giant turtle attacking an uncle he will never know. If I am truly lucky, perhaps those memories will live on in him.
If he is truly lucky, he'll be too busy running, playing, exploring, and creating memories of his own.
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Eh, that's life, dude. My childhood home doesn't even exist anymore (it was torn down and rebuilt by someone else).
Your home isn't as important as your wife and family. Cherish those parts of your life, not the land you remember as a child. The world is full of land, but that wife of yours is the only one there is, just as your kids will be completely yours (and nobody else's), and you'll hopefully love them enough to not care where you're at. That's what matters in the long run.
Everything else is just scenery.
Posts: 1324 | Registered: Feb 2011
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I can't even imagine what this would be like; we moved two or three times a year when I was a child, since we were routinely being thrown out of apartments for non-payment.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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We didn't move that often, but often enough that we didn't have what you could call a childhood home. We did rent one place for 15 years or so but that has been long gone.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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That is a hard thing, Dan, and I'm sorry that you're having to experience it. I may do so myself, someday, if my brother isn't in a position to take over the place. I am not looking forward to it.
Posts: 1087 | Registered: Jul 1999
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Before I moved out at 18, I used to have nightmares about my parents deciding to sell our house that they built and in which I had lived since I was days old.
The house itself isn't that special really (I like it, but it's modern and pretty normal for the area) but the location and the views are very pretty. And it kind of grew with me, because we're the same age and in a way we developed in sync.
I decided in the end that when they sell I'll never go back there, and I probably wouldn't even want to take my kids, but just show them pictures of how it was and how it changed through the years while I knew it.
Now that I'm living 800 miles away, I don't have those nightmares much anymore. But I do completely get where you are coming from, and I hope, like all losses, it gets easier to bear.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Oh, this. Yeah, this is going to be hard on me. By now my wonderful, wonderful, lived-in, every-inch-of-it-with-a-potent-nostalgic-historical-file in my head, would be .. well, let's just say that from a psychological standpoint, you can become so connected to a real home that its loss hits you on a level analogous to a death in the family, no jokes. Thinking about its 50/50 probability of being emptied and sold, and thinking of me standing in this room, only with it completely empty down to the carpet, and knowing it will never be home again, that it's done, it's dead ..
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I love that country song "The House That Built Me" because it deals with these feelings, and it hits just the right note to me. It's about someone going back to a house they no longer live in, but it is similar to what you are feeling, I bet.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Well, while I sympathise with the sale of your house, as your family has owned it for a fair few years, let's have some perspective.
quote:Usually, when such a thing occurs, it is surrounded by deeper tragedy. Usually it is the result of the death of a parent, or another natural disaster, or some great political upheaval.
Or, you know, the family simply moved. Lots of people lived in two or more homes growing up. Sure, our homes have some level of nostalgia, but the sale of them is more frequently connected with a financial or space decision than some tragedy. My parents sold their house when it became apparent that we were never going to return to the country I started my life in. They used the funds to buy a new, larger house to put their expanding family in.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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There is a difference between a house you lived in for a while and a house where you spent all of your life in. I only had 2 homes, and I moved from one of them when I was 6, so moving from MI was very traumatic for me. Almost every good memory I had of my life was tied to that house, and to that neighborhood.
My parents moved several times after that, and I moved with them to MA where they spent 12 years, but it wasn't a big deal to me to have them move from MA....almost none of my memories were tied to that place, I was a bit older, and a lot fo THOSE memories were not good.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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The house I mostly grew up in got condemned by the county and demolished a while back. My father still owned it, owns the land now I suppose. Houses, for him, are like shoes or jeans for regular people. He has too many and he has difficulty disposing of them.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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