Tonight as I rocked my cranky baby to calm him before bed, my eyes filled with tears as I caught myself feeling rushed to get him to bed and take pictures of the house on cleaning lady day, for our rental listing. I didn't take the pictures.
How dare I rush these last few weeks in our sweet house? Rocking my baby in his nursery for one of the last times, in the chair we rocked and rocked and rocked in for hours. I'm much more excited than anything, but I get a huge lump in my throat when I think about leaving this place.
Few people know this about me, but I have suffered from horrible home sickness my entire life. Every summer growing up my brother couldn't wait to go to week long church camp in the mountains, and it never failed he'd talk my dad into paying for just one more week before dad finally drug him home. I went once. For one week. And cried myself to sleep every night, head buried in the pillow so no one would hear. I was 12.
I secretly loved the fact that my parents were not fond of my childhood best friend's folks because it meant we always had to spend the night at my house. Faith can vouch for the fact that I literally slept my way through the first year in the dorm. I was so homesick, and it was especially hard because my parents were no longer in our home. There was nowhere to go home when I was homesick.
That feeling has followed me every move since, and even some vacations. Don't even get me started on the first time I went to Ft. Myers for Christmas. I sat outside on the phone Christmas morning, in the hot Florida sun, crying to my mommy and daddy that I had no business being down there and it wasn't even Christmas because I wasn't with them. I was 21.
So this is a feeling I know and hate well. And I know it's not going anywhere, but I really think it's going to be different this time. This time I'm not leaving our home, we're relocating home. As a family. Hopefully being with Jason and Hardin will make this one a lot better, and I hope we will stay there for a very very very long time. I told Jason the last time we were there, I shouldn't say this out loud, but this house already feels like our home. I hope that feeling last.
But I digress. This home we're in now will always be remembered as my dream home. It's the home in which all of my big dreams came true. While we technically got married and I graduated law school living in our apartment, soon after we bought this house and the rest was history. This is the house I became a wife in, and Jason a husband. I became an attorney. And most importantly, I became a mother, and Jason a father. Where we became a family. It's where I nourished my marriage, grew my career, and welcomed my first born.
It was the first and last place we would ever invite my sweet daddy for a holiday in a home we made. It was the place Jason and I stayed up way too late playing beer pong when we were living in a grown up house but not really there yet. It's where we were when we learned that our nephews and niece were on their way. Where our baby learned how to walk and talk. Where we learned how to be a good neighbors, and learned to appreciate the absolute necessity that is good neighbors ourselves.
We will miss nothing more than the front porch. I can honestly say that my favorite memories with Jason have been made sitting in our rocking chairs on the front porch, and I think he would agree. Over the past five years we've talked about every thing there is to talk about in those chairs. Some nights just how much we love to sit and talk on in those chairs. It has been our time, once or twice a week, to escape and unplug and be us.
This house has been so incredibly good to us. Every day filled with love and laughter, but also holder of my heaviest shed tears. We love this house, and will be forever grateful for it's place in our lives. Har-doo's house, as our sweet boy calls it, will surely be missed.
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