In January we said farewell to our family home. Ninety years is a good run for anything and I absolutely feel enormous gratitude for the gift of a shared place that was so loved by so many. 409 Oak Lane was the center of our lives in many ways. And it was a magnet for friends and neighbors—the site of end of the year picnics, holiday parties, graduation celebrations, Easter egg hunts, and three wedding receptions. It was a joyful place, filled with warmth and welcome and love. It was the place we gathered for our big moments. Where my two siblings and I got ready for our weddings. The place our children gathered with their cousins, played games of hide and seek inside, and whiffle ball and badminton outside. It was a stopping off point, a hub, the nexus of our family for many years and host to more celebrations than can be counted—from elegant weddings to laid back picnics.
I miss this place as the focal point of so much large living for our family. But I will miss the small details of it most. The smooth feel of the brass doorknob in my hand as I entered the house, the smell of it—an indescribable mix of old wood house, my mom's cooking, and the remnants of hundreds of fires in the hearth. I will miss it's sounds—the creaks and pops characteristic of all old houses, but also the particular squeaks of floorboards that my siblings and I learned to skirt late at night. One of those was at the entryway to my childhood room. As a young adult, I had a practiced ability to broad jump over that spot in the wee hours of the morning. It was a skill that came back readily years later when a crib was set up in that room for visiting grand babies. Outside the yard is punctuated with my grandmother's azaleas and for a single week in May it is an impressionistic painting in pink and purple. I will miss the stately spread of the sycamores that shaded much of the yard, providing a canopy of cool green on a summer's day and a shelter in a light rain.
Change is often hard to accept, and I anticipated this change for months leading up to the move—how would I feel walking past 409 on my regular walks? Where would we congregate as a family? How would Mom and Dad (particularly Mom) cope with the loss of the only house they'd know as home during their marriage? It turns out that the anticipation was far worse than the reality. It turns out that a house is not home if the people you love aren't in it and 409 is now in someone else's hands and family. Mom and Dad are happy in their new place—joining activities, traveling, enjoying their new neighbors. And the rest of us have our own homes and are figuring out how to create new traditions. Life marches forward.
And perhaps the most difficult moment I've had since closing the door at 409 that last day was driving by after learning that the new owners have cut down that grand sycamore and removed my grandmothers azaleas from the back yard to make way for an addition. It broke my heart to see the yard that my grandmother and my parents so lovingly tended so reduced. It brought back a flood of memories of moments under the shelter of that tree and photos with those flowers as a backdrop.
I am so grateful we have those photos and memories—they recall time and place and the many people who basked in the shade of that sycamore or posed in front of those azaleas—those times will be always ours to call to mind as we cherish our memories of 409. Good times...great memories. How lucky were we?
Please enjoy the video tribute that Megan created.