With tears in my eyes and my daughter in my arms, I snap a selfie in the mirror of my old bedroom. It was my refuge from the world during my formative years. My sanctuary. A world of my own creation, with posters, photos, stuffed animals, and secrets. I'd spent so many hours in that room, singing, sulking, wishing, crying. Hour after hour listening to music, doing hair and makeup, chatting on the phone, and dreaming of the future. I'd stared at myself in my bedroom mirror, thinking that age sixteen was so far away...would I ever be old enough to drive a car? The future I'd once dreamed about is now part of my past.
Today I said goodbye to my childhood home. It's a stepping stone on the path of life I suppose, but you're never really prepared to confront the enormity of ending a chapter in your life. It's not the physical house that I'm bidding farewell, nor the memories made within its walls. The memories are mine to keep. But facing the reality of the amount of time that has passed is almost overwhelming. The persistence of forward motion, with all of its gains and losses. Has it really been over two decades since my high school graduation? When my family and friends gathered in the garage, eating the cheesecake my mother made. We looked at big poster boards of photos, trophies and certificates of achievement. The warm spring breeze blowing through the giant screen that my parents bought to let the air into the attached single stall on the corner of 10th Street and 30th Ave North.
I walk slowly down the upstairs hallway of our home, now empty of the photos that once lined the wall. In the spring of '88, my mother chased me down that hallway and I slammed my bedroom door. It was the day of my first communion, and I was wearing a beautiful dress that would eventually be worn by two of my younger cousins for their first communions. My mother made my veil. I wore a pearly heart-shaped necklace that was a gift from my friend Sharon. My face hurt from smiling. I'd never endured as many photographs in my life until that day, and I was done. "Just one more before you take off your veil!" My mother pleaded from the other side of the door. "Fine." I smiled as big and hard as anyone has ever smiled. That photo is still in a frame.
I descend the stairs to the basement. Where the wall phone once hung, the empty socket of an obsolete phone cord stares lifelessly out at the family room. The kitchen phone offered no privacy, so I'd spend hours sitting on the bottom two steps talking on that basement phone with my friends. I can still remember some of their phone numbers. The old orange couch is long gone, as is the table at which I'd done countless jigsaw puzzles and homework. There is a recently-patched hole in the wall just outside the door frame of my basement bedroom. One of my hamsters had escaped and ended up trapped between the walls. It was after midnight on a school night when I woke my parents to drill a hole in the wall to rescue her. How can that be thirty years ago? Thirty years?
There is a space in the backyard where a rickety old shed once stood. In third grade, as my friend Kristi and I went tearing past the shed on our way to play soccer in the nearby field, the door blew open. A protruding nail sliced through my arm, leaving a gaping wound that would require sixteen stitches. The shed is now gone, torn down and replaced with an updated version on the other side of the yard. But I still have the scar.
In two weeks, I will be forty years old. The bizarre reality of this statement rings even more bizarre at this moment, as the memories of my young self wash over me, so thick and real. I've built a grown-up life, with a family of my own. I do grown-up things that once upon a time, in this house, seemed so far off that they were all but impossible. Now they're just what I do. The impossible is now my reality.
I back out of the driveway for what is likely the last time. A tear spills over as a slide show of memories plays in my mind. Birthdays, holidays, rainy afternoons and sweltering summers. The smells from the kitchen that has since been remodeled. The stains that peppered the sidewalk every fall when the crab apples fell from the tree in the front yard, a tree that's been gone for years. Time takes no prisoners, but it does leave gifts. My kids babble from the back seat, happily oblivious to the emotional toll of the situation. I wipe the tear, and silently promise those kids a lifetime of memories to take the edge off their future goodbyes. That is the best gift that time, and I, can give.
