30.6.11

There’s No Place Like Home: Part II

 

noplacelikehome

You know, Birmingham never really felt like “home” to my husband and me. We were always (and still are) very thankful for our house there (especially since we’d previously lived in a 350 square foot studio with a murphy bed), but we always planned to eventually move somewhere different, so it always felt temporary- like an “in-between-here-and-there” kinda place. Because of that, (and the fact that we were moving to a place with beaches and palm trees) I thought that leaving the old place would be a breeze and that we’d have no emotional attachment whatsoever. It was just a house to us, a cute little cookie-cutter house. That’s all. Nothing special. Boy was I wrong…

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As moving day neared, I felt myself getting strangely emotional. “What in the name of Jesus is this about? Am I really sad about leaving this place??” I asked myself. “Surely not. We’ve wanted to move to Florida for a while now and we’re excited! Beaches! Palm trees! I must just be anxious and wound a little too tight with all that’s going on…” After convincing myself I wasn’t sad about leaving this house, I decided to go through and take pictures and video of it, just so we’d remember what it looked like. Oh yeah, and because I am a mushy, sentimental sap. But seriously, this was our first house together. I’m actually getting a little choked up now just thinking about it…

As I walked through, I thought about all the things that had happened in that house. The fights, the laughter, the happiness, the chasing of cats with squirt bottles…

wet-catnikkigsblog.wrdprs

(nikkigsblog.wordpress)

(It’s fun. Really. Try it next time your cat misbehaves.)

I remembered carving jack o’lanterns together and setting them on the porch to greet all the little trick-or-treaters…Photo0317_001

the rare snows we saw and played in (ok, that I played in)…snow

(me. in the snow. with blonde hair. very excited. people get that way about snow in Alabama…)

the stupid boobie lights that I hated and never got the chance to replace…

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(told you they looked like boobies. big ol’ lit up boobies…)

I thought about the Christmases we spent there, the hauling in of the tree we’d cut down ourselves, the cursing as my husband tried to get it upright in the stand and to stay that way. The fun we, no…I, had putting up decorations and how my wonderful, patient, understanding hubs learned to let me do the bow on top of the tree, flouf it, straighten the lights, and make sure all the ornaments were evenly spaced and balanced (because I’m anal like that). I remembered the walks we took through the neighborhood,…100_5130 100_5132

grilling all summer long while having a few beers and watching the game, my poor little dog dying and the morning my husband told me and held me as I cried,…image 

and the night my husband proposed to me in the living room on our old red sofa and how surprised I was. You know, I went from someone who was afraid to chop strawberries to someone who is passionate about cooking in that kitchen. I taught myself how to cook there. And that wacky fridge of ours- I remember the night the freezer door went crazy and started shooting ice and peeing water everywhere… even after my husband unplugged it! Life happened in that house- good and bad - and over a fairly short period of time, without us really realizing it, that house had become home. It was never our intention to get so attached to that place, we certainly didn’t expect that we ever would, but we shared a lot in that house, we grew together in that house, we fell deeper in love with each other in that house, and that, my friends, made it special. That made it home. And it wasn’t until we started to leave it that I realized how much it really meant to us.

The last morning there with my husband, a couple of suitcases and an air mattress, as he was getting ready to leave, he snapped a picture of us and titled it “last morning at the house”. It’s one of my favorite pictures of us, even if my nose was all red and my eyes a little puffy. I stayed a week to supervise repairs and so on, and on my last day there, after I’d said all my goodbyes to my family, I drove back for one last look and it had started to rain. I cried like a baby. I was really excited about moving to Florida and I certainly missed my husband, but I was/am really going to miss our first house, our first home.

I drove ten hours by myself to Tampa and rejoined my husband and our new townhouse of boxes. When I talked to him later about it and told him how I hadn’t expected to get so torn up inside, he admitted to having gotten a little emotional himself when he drove away that morning (and trust me, that’s very unusual for him). He said he even teared up just a little. But after I cried a little as we sat on the sofa in our new apartment, talking about the old house, I realized it was less about the actual shell of the house, and more about the memories and experiences that made it home. So as we embark on this new journey here in Florida, I will enjoy turning our new place into a home. A nice, beautiful, comfy home…

homeswthome


2 comments:

  1. Hope you are getting all settled in your new home and making it special for both of you! xoxo

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  2. Hi Anna! I AM beginning to get settled in, finally. The place is a bit sparse right now because I really pared down for the move so I could do my own thing, sort of starting from scratch. I'll be posting pictures tomorrow of what I've started. Thanks for stopping by!

    Alicia

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