My home… or what I hope becomes was my home. That’s my new favorite place in my city. Current city, at least.
Oh my. I can already see my head spinning me in circles.
When we bought our house, I always thought this is our starter home. Quickly, it became the place that would teach us to be a team. How to wake up in the middle of the night to take the new puppy out. How to grow our own food. How DIY works IRL. We would bring our babies home to this house. We would laugh, cry, fight and make-up in this house. And now that we are ready to leave… I see, that it’s my favorite.
This place, nestled in the Edgewood section of Cranston, Rhode Island has been so loved and cared for. Tenderly cleaned and painted, the walls scuffed here and there from the excitement of the dog or the wildness of a toddler. All these spaces we filled, rearranged and changed… they are ours. And I love them.
And yet, this home is already not my own. We’ve made changes, punctuated the notes of our home and it’s transformed. The clutter is gone, accents placed. It’s become what I want my forever home to be… and I see I’ve neglected this one. The whispers of permanence one gets from owning a home are the things I’ve denied myself since we moved in. We painted the deck, but I never quite got to adding my sitting area- now we have a cute chevron rug and wicker chairs… and I’ve sat out there every single day since setting it up. It’s beautiful and bright- even with the traffic from our street, I feel like I’m in my own peaceful oasis.
And I feel both robbed and a robber.
Not giving myself these finer details for the past 6 years. And stripping my children of the only home they’ve known. Sure, people do it every day… but I never moved as a child, and doing so makes me feel sentimental for a childhood I, perhaps, am not providing.
So… I am a sentimental fool, I suppose.
My favorite place is the one I am giving up… because staying here would make it not so. It’s almost like a relationship you end because it’s for the better… but that doesn’t mean your heart doesn’t break a little in the process. Have you ever felt like this about a place you were leaving? How did you keep it all together?
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I feel like this now! We are going through it. Doing home repairs and updates now…not to enjoy but so someone else can. It’s the right move but I’m still sad and wonder the impact it will have on the kids. I moved as a kid…a lot….3 times in kindergarten alone. “Mommy, I don’t want to he the new kid anymore” heartwrenching. I won’t do that to my kids. So we will move now. Get to our hopefully forever home before they get too connected to their community. And I remind myself it will be better for them in the long run. And that it’s not the physical structure that makes a home but the people who fill it ;)good luck with your sale!
Very exciting times for us!
We moved when my younger son was about to start kindergarten, and my older son was about to start fourth grade. I felt horrible pulling my older son away from his school and friends, but we had no choice as my husband’s job was relocated.
It has all worked out in the end, and we like out new home better. We live hear the ocean, which we love, and my son has made great friends.
Life IS about change, so I am trying to learn to embrace that. In fact I would like to move to the beach when my youngest finishes school.
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