Evicted Childhood

I wrote a little about this a while ago, but it seems the metaphorical umbilical cord connecting me to my childhood will be cut off sooner rather than later. Here’s the rundown: I lived in the same house for 18 years, my parents built a new house in a new town soph. year of college, they moved, but then my sister rented our old house from them, only she just bought her own house, and thus, my childhood home is on the real estate market. My ‘rents still have some of their stuff at the old house, as do I. But I hear the house is basically cleared out.

You might think this is no big deal, houses are empty all the time when no one is living in them. Not for me. This is the first time in my entire existence that this house will be empty. I haven’t seen it yet. But I will this weekend. It was weird when my parents moved all their furniture out, because that was the furniture I saw for 18 years.You know, the rocking chair I’d fall asleep in and the couch I’d practice flips on. But then my sister moved all her stuff in, so I have never seen the house empty. Seeing all of the empty rooms will be like meeting a person devoid of a soul. It will just be an empty shell, holding memories but no life. Like a dying pet or sick grandmother, I’d rather not see it. I want to remember it the way it was.

I will walk into my room and see 18 years of childhood vacuum sealed in plastic Sterilite containers. I will see my extensive American Girl doll collection, Barbies, Legos, stuffed animals, and everything from my girlhood that I don’t want to forget. Moving all that stuff to my parents’ new house will be like pulling the roots up from a tree. I’ll realize that I don’t live there anymore, and I won’t ever again.

I realize that I am lucky to have a room at my parents’ new house (mostly for storage purposes) but it’s not my room. I haven’t ever lived there longer than a month, and most of my trips are 2-6 days long. That house is not my house, it belongs to my parents. My house is the empty one sitting in the woods down a windy gravel road.