I'm coming to you live from my room growing up. It's a little different, of course. The walls are now painted a bright (and in my opinion, ugly) teal color. There are some motivational hand drawings on the wall that say “color your life in the chaos of trouble.” Whatever that means. My little sister's old room still feels like my old room. The window still looks out onto my parents beautiful backyard where I can see the Helene Rose of Sharon bush next to a wilted trampoline.
At night I would leave the plantation shutters open so that I could see myself in the reflection and dance to the newest Britney Spears in the reflection. This would happen probably 4 nights a week. Okay I lied. Probably 7.
It still has the old rickety door with three separate, all different, locks that lead to the outside. The closet still has shelving, and in the corner, I've left my mark with a leftover Yankees Barbie Doll still it's box next to a piece of artwork I made in high school. Coming home to your childhood house feels like everything and nothing has changed.
On Saturday, I said goodbye to our house. We're renting it, so we scrubbed it until it shined and put a “For Lease” sign in the yard. I only let one tear slip.
These past few weeks have been hard. I didn't realize quite how difficult moving a household cross country would be. I've moved before, but it was from my room in my parents home, to dorm room, to apartment, to our house. When you move like this, you don't usually have as much stuff. Now that we're home owners the stuff just seems to acquire over the years. What used to be junk, fits neatly into bookshelves and cabinets and is stowed away forever. Until you move.
We did get rid of junk during our garage sale but it seems like it's taken forever just to pack everything up. I'm not looking forward to unloading our U-Pack next week. So instead, I'll revert to my childhood and pretend I'm 12 again.
Although we were supposed to be leaving last weekend for Nashville, I'm secretly glad we have one more week to savor Dallas and everything in it. One more week with home cooked meals at my parent's house. One more week to walk my favorite park. One more week for wine with friends. Then the chaos of moving can officially begin.
