home.
my parents just sold the house that i grew up in. 25 years we lived there. 25 years of fights and laughter. 9,125 breakfasts and 9,125 dinners. 10 years spent while there was a teenager in the house, and 3 years when "the kids came back home." it was a great house, for an even greater family. and i have to say, after all the memories and all the time spent at a great grey house at the end of a long, muddy road, i didn't shed a tear. not a single one. it's not that i wasn't sad, because i was, i am. it certainly is the end of an era. but what i realized, and i think i speak for the rest of the fam as well, is that weather or not we still have that place, we will always have the memories we created there. memories like sitting on the stairs christmas morning waiting for dad to let us scamper in and see what santa left (and giving him time to eat all the cookies), building easter snow-bunnies in the front lawn, eating turkey tetrazzini for a week straight after thanksgiving, walking down the street to the best halloween party ever (right, mom?), coming home one night in april and hearing the peepers for the first time, watching all sorts of wildlife do all sorts of things, listening to the laughter (from the bathroom) of all the people i love most in the world...
and we created our last memory at 29 partridge last night. the 4 of us huddled in the kitchen and ate a fridge full of leftovers, them moved the party upstairs where we sta on the floor drinking cafe patron out of a plastic cup before we all curled up in sleeping bags and passed out on the floor of my parent's bedroom...
so, more than anything, the last night in our empty, sad looking house, reaffirmed the fact that a home has nothing to do with the style of furniture, or the color of your drapes, but rather it is all about the memories you create there and the people with whom you share them. long story short, i love you guys. xoxo
"home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.”
- robert frost
