Before the moving-in dust had time to settle, my future daughter-in-law Vicki found a job—a contract position in the human resources department at Microsoft. It was very important to her to get a job in order to contribute to the household and pay her expenses, but also because it’s what you’re supposed to do after graduation. The contract will take her through May and we’re hoping it will be the window to a permanent position.
Leaving home and family and moving almost 3,000 miles across the country is not an easy feat. Harder still, is the knowledge that the home you left behind may no longer be there when you come back. As Vicki prepared for her move to Seattle, her brother was bound for his freshman year at college and her parents were diligently working to put their family home on the market. A move to southern Virginia is planned.
Saying goodbye to the house you grew up in can almost seem overwhelming, but I've discovered that everything important about a house lives inside you. The house is just a shell. And if you are close in heart to your parents, it doesn’t matter where they live, because they are “home” and always will be.
My parents bought the house I considered my childhood home when I was almost seven. I lived there for over 16 years, about half the time they actually owned the house. When I moved out, I stayed in the area, which meant there were frequent visits over the next 16 years as I got married and had kids. How interesting though, that I only spent one night there during all that time and that was during our move from my first house in Crofton to my current house in Frederick.
When my parents decided to sell and move to Florida, it was a bittersweet moment. After 33 years in the same house, it was hard to imagine anyone but mom and dad living there. But they were retired; my brother had been living in Florida for some time and the plans to move had been in the works for a while. Besides, a house with a pool in warm, sunny Orlando, Florida sounded like a dream. I think the hardest thing to think about was the fact that my boys, the only two grandchildren, were going to be so far away from their grandparents.
I was still married when my parents moved, but things weren’t good and the marriage ended abruptly a year later. It was devastating to be suddenly alone with two small children, no job (I had been a stay-at-home mom for nine years), no financial resources, no family close by and no clear picture of the immediate future. I’ve thought about my mom and dad receiving this news so far away and how difficult it must have been for them to accept this new reality. I never let on to my parents completely about the state of my marriage; they had some idea but they always trusted my judgment. If my parents had known the true state of my marriage, I’m not sure that they would have felt comfortable moving. I recently asked my dad if they would have moved had the marriage ended prior to their selling the house. He said probably no. How sad it would have been to not have our Florida memories!
Sometimes the sequence of life’s events leaves us wondering Why me? Why now? It can be amazing how things often work out for the best. The Florida years were some of the most wonderful in my life and I know my kids feel the same. Some of our best memories and one of our saddest were made during trips to our home away from home. And that is exactly what Florida became. It became “home”. When the time came for my dad to move, saying goodbye to that house was actually harder than saying goodbye to my childhood home. For one reason, it was only my dad who was moving, as my mother had passed away six years prior. Once again though, every memory we took away, we treasure. All that we left behind was a shell. Home really is where the heart is.
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