moving day

Today marks the end of an era.  My parents are packing up their home in Wisconsin and moving back across the mason-dixon line.  Back with "their people."  My excitement for them has carried me to this point and helped me provide them with emotional support throughout the packing and purging period of the move.  But today, I woke with a slight sadness in my heart.  I didn't really get a chance to say good-bye to the house that helped shape me.  We've lived in many homes throughout my life, because we seemed to move every six years or so.  Because of that, I've never had that sense of going back to the house that I grew up in.  This house in Wisconsin was the closest thing I ever had to that.  We moved there at the end of 1994, so this house has been our home for 16 years, which is insane for our family.

Random picture my Dad sent me when the tree in the front yard split

Now when I go home for Christmas, I won't have a home to go do.  I mean, I will because I'm always welcomed at my in-laws wonderful home, but it's just different.  And I will go visit my parents in their new home, but I'll have no attachment to it.

Our Wisconsin home has been so important to me because I lived there during those pivotal years of my youth.  The getting ready for the first day of high school, sneaking cigarettes on the back porch, stealing peach schnapps from the liquor cabinet,  going on the first date with the man who would become my husband, getting ready for proms, sitting in the car in the garage pretending like I already knew how to drive, celebrating 16th birthdays with a grand surprise and a poodle skirt, saying good-bye as I drove off to college, holding my brand new nephew, returning from college for long "what's your new major" discussions, sitting at the island and chatting for hours with Mom and Dad, packing up the car and driving off to California, coming home as an engaged couple, coming home as a married couple...

I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  It shaped me and I'm going to miss it.

what's better than this?

Lately, I've been hearing this song on the radio and it touches my heart every time.  I thought I'd share.  

Best wishes to my parents on their new adventure, I cannot wait to visit them in their new home.  And farewell to the house that built me.