A very, very, very fine house

There were days the past few weeks when it was difficult to see the road ahead had an end to it.

Dismantling a home is more than just packing up your belongings and watching them being loaded onto a truck. It is something like being reinvented. It is exciting, excruciating. and exhausting.

I knew the house I just moved out of would not be my home forever; I am not a native Minnesotan and I was only able to appreciate its seasonal charms for the first three years of the 14 my family and I lived there. I knew the day would come when we would leave and head back to the West Coast; to where life began for us and where family members yearned for us to return.

But something happens to the square footage you inhabit when you raise kids within it. It becomes a member of the family. Really, it does. It was Home to your kids — and to you — and you felt safe, wanted and needed there. It’s where the sweetest of memories were made. It was a laboratory like no other.

I am sure I will be able recapture those same feelings in my new home but it will not be the same. Three of our four kids are all grown up; this new home will be Mom and Dad’s place to them. It will be home, but it will be different.

There’s nothing I want to change about the twist in the road I’ve just taken. But I am aware of the emotional toll it has had on me, and it’s best not to ignore that which begs to be noticed. I can almost hear my old house calling out to me, “Don’t forget me, don’t forget me.” And I am calling back to it, “Impossible to forget you, impossible.”

Now that the major part of the move is over I am back from the blogfast and will post here again with devotion if not regularity on Mondays and Fridays. Thanks for bearing with me during a time of transition that I would only recommend to those who have plenty of fortitude, pluck and Advil.

It’s nice to be back.