At eighteen, I moved from the house I was raised into the house I bought with my nineteen-year-old husband. It was my first move ever. I packed everything I owned into a refrigerator box, thinking I was both clever and resourceful. Until the box had to be moved, of course. It took my father, my husband and my grandfather to hoist it into the truck.
Leaving behind the orange shag carpet, flowered wallpaper and sparkly ceiling of my childhood bedroom was like leaving behind a close friend. I felt a sense of loss. I knew every square inch of that bedroom by heart. The closet so deep, it was like a secret room all its own. The worn carpet around the heat vent where I pressed my ear and listened to conversations from the floor below. In the winter, my window frosted up on the inside, and I scratched my name in it with my fingernail.
My room was part of me.
At eighteen, I believed myself to be a fully formed adult capable of creating a home. I had the example of my mom, whom I deliberately copied. Before long, my eight-hundred-square-foot house was transformed into a warm, cozy nest. And I learned to love it.
The sloping kitchen floor covered in green and gold paisley carpet. The antique clawfoot bathtub that took an hour to fill, so we never did. There was wallpaper torn from wear, windows painted shut and a toilet jutting out of the floor like a rocket.
“Character,” my grandfather said. “This place has character.”
After ten years, two babies and some cosmetic remodeling, we moved to our next home. That move required a bit more than one refrigerator box. We packed up our lives in a moving van and trucked across town to a brand-new house twice the size of our first one.
The neighborhood was new, and we felt like we were really getting in on something grand. The loss I felt for the house we’d left soon disappeared as I spread out in the new one. Two floors, bedrooms upstairs, a living room and sitting room with a fireplace, plus a dining room and kitchen. It was a dream come true.
And as with the house before, it became a home, a refuge, a friend.
Carpet worn flat from little feet running up and down the stairs multiple times a day. The scratch on the living room ceiling from the too-tall Christmas tree we tried to fit. There were nicks in the walls I touched up with one of the boys’ paint-by-number brushes.
Our home became the hub for family gatherings and parties. Where we grew, where we loved and where we broke.
Ten years in the second house marked the end of my twenty-year marriage. It marked the end of many things in my life and my boys’ lives.
We bought boxes from a moving company, carefully labeling each one to make it easier on the other end.
But where was the other end?
Our circumstances led to uncertainty, instability and far more questions than answers. This was not a welcome move.
My youngest son snapped pictures of the walls where I’d pressed vinyl sayings about family and love. He was trying to preserve something he couldn’t take with him. He cried as he pulled his clothes and toys from the closets, stacking them into boxes and shoving them into bags.
I’d joked so many times about my kids one day bringing their own kids to this house. Now it would never happen.
Losing this house dug deep into my sense of security and the security I believed I needed to provide for my boys.
I watched as they broke down, sobbing, certain I had failed them. I had taught them to love our house as their home, and now I expected them to leave it.
First steps, teething marks on the counter, the height lines on the wall. We had to leave it all.
I circled my children with my arms, shielding them as best I could. I wasn’t sure what I could protect them from anymore.
Heartbroken as I was, I did not miss the irony of the house we found ourselves renting. After staying with a dear friend for a few months, the boys and I moved into a carbon copy of house number one. Same layout, same square footage, same peeling paint.
I had begun my adult life in an almost identical house a few blocks away. But this time, everything was different.
Determined to make this new place as familiar as possible, I arranged furniture, hung pictures and filled the kitchen with the scent of baking sweet bread.
The boys settled in and pretended along with me that we weren’t hurting, weren’t lost and that everything would be all right.
But as time went on, I became keenly aware that neither my children nor I had developed a connection with this house the way we had with our previous home.
We now knew that no house was permanent. That even our understanding of family wasn’t permanent. Only those who chose to stay.
In the years that followed, there would be other moves. With each one, my attachment to place diminished. My desire to recreate the sense of home I once held in such esteem lessened.
And I began to realize that perhaps what I’d been searching for all along wasn’t a house. It was the security I believed I could create by making one.
When my sixth move took me to Tucson for a couple of years, I eventually left that house without an ounce of sadness. I couldn’t return fast enough to the family waiting for me in Washington.
My sons, though grown, were still the very beat of my heart. I knew I’d live in a tent if it meant being nearer to them.
As my wife and I drove home to Washington from Arizona, I felt the excitement mount. We were moving into an apartment, the first one I’d ever lived in, and I couldn’t have been more delighted.
It mattered so little that our square footage would be less or that I’d have fewer walls to decorate. What mattered was being with my kids, being near my parents and friends, and being enveloped by the beauty of my home state.
And now, here I am again. Boxes, packing tape and the inevitable discovery that we own far more stuff than we think we do.
Except this time, the boxes aren’t mine.
I’ve just finished helping C move, and D is next. I’m watching my grown sons pack up their lives, and I can’t help thinking about the moves we made together when they were children. About the house they cried over leaving and the homes we’ve occupied since.
I watch as C packs his belongings with care but also with excitement. He’s moving to a larger space, a newer space, closer to the college he attends.
D eagerly helps his brother carry furniture and boxes up the long flight of stairs to the new apartment. Sweat beads at his temples, but he’s all smiles. He’s happy for C and growing more eager for his own move.
I can’t help but remember my first move. The refrigerator box bulging at the corners, heavy with the weight of my belongings, and the three grown men it took to carry it.
I look now at my own grown men.
They’re still my boys. I still want to protect them from life’s upheavals. I want to guarantee their happiness. I want to spare them the heartbreak of leaving something they love.
But I can’t.
At thirty-one, C still totes a worn canvas bag containing his very first blanket from one dwelling to the next. I remember the first time I wrapped him in it. The smell of his newborn skin against my cheek. I watch D, the little boy who once photographed the walls of our family home, now smiling as he carries his brother’s belongings up the stairs.
One looking forward. One carrying something from the beginning. Both making their way.
I think about the woman I was, standing in an empty house with her arms wrapped around two sobbing boys, convinced she’d failed them because she couldn’t give them a home that would last.
All those years, all those houses, all those boxes.
I thought my job was to give my children a home they would never have to leave.
I never imagined that one day, I’d watch them carry it away.
