Patterico's Pontifications

4/11/2006

Endings and Beginnings

Filed under: Real Life — Patterico @ 7:13 am



We sold our condo. The closing is tomorrow. We stopped by it on Saturday night, on the way back from Napa, to say goodbye for the last time.

When our children were born, that was where we brought them home. It’s where they learned to talk. Where they smiled their first smiles.

“This is where you took your first steps,” I told Lauren. “There was a chair here that you liked to hold onto. I stood you up three or four steps away, and you walked right to it!”

It was late — already well past the kids’ bedtime — and we didn’t have time to relive all the memories. But even if we’d had all day, there wouldn’t have been time to relive them all. There were too many.

When we first moved in, there was no Matthew and no Lauren, just a newly married couple and a cat named Aslan that we have since lost to kidney failure. (Christi used to give him IV fluids in the same chair Lauren walked to.) After we got the keys, but before we moved in, we went there late at night. We let the cat run around while Christi and I sat on the floor, lit a candle, and talked about what we would do in our new place.

On our last night there, our family sat in the same place, and talked for a few minutes about everything that had changed since that night.

“We had some good times here,” I said to Christi.

And, with luck, there will be more. Just not there.

A line from a song by the Gin Blossoms sums it up:

The past is gone
But something might be found to take its place

3 Responses to “Endings and Beginnings”

  1. Yes. March 17, 1991 to May 29, 2002 for us. We decided that we wanted needed a house with a yard, a basement, and a park across the street now that we had a daughter. The place is not what is most important. The last line from Mark Twain’s “The Diary of Adam and Eve”: “Where she was, there was Eden”.

    nk (bfc26a)

  2. I know the feeling. We’re moving next month, from the house we moved into in June 2000, then with a 2-year-old and a 10-month-old, now with an 8-year-old, a six-year-old and a 1-month old. It’s the house I came home to on 9/11 after they blew up my office. Leaving the memories will be the hard part.

    Crank (3fed2a)

  3. Goodbyes are sad and that definitely includes places and homes.

    Being a cat lover, I can imagine Aslan running around an empty condo, investigating as cats do and taking immediate ownership. Then the full circle with fluids, and the hardest goodbye of all.

    Your kids will delight in exploring the nooks and crannies of a new home… and a fun new neighborhood filled with friends and exciting new adventures! Congratulations and enjoy.

    Vermont Neighbor (a9ae2c)


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