Growing Up, Moving On

It has always been Home. In a quiet suburb of an unremarkable town, turn left at the shaded corner and at the end of a grinning cul-de-sac, there it sits. My home. I grew up here. I have walked down this street ten thousand times. In blazing heat, in falling snow, holding hands with children, arm and arm with friends, pushing a stroller, walking a dog, riding a bike, intoxicated, in love, with family, alone. This is the most familiar place that I know and it has come time to say good-bye.

I stand at one end of my street looking toward the ordinary house at the other end, my family home. This is what I see, what I have seen for more than 35 years of unchanged memory. A backdrop of rolling mountains upholstered with golden grasses and sagebrush, dotted with accents of pine and fir. The same skyline that I have come home to my whole life. When everything else seems to be changing so quickly, this picture has remained constant, my constant. Neighbouring fields and idle pastures are now paved and built upon. Cell phone towers and city lights inflict their scars at every glance. Roads, condos and golf courses cleverly situated replace the open spaces and clay hills of my childhood. But this house, this street, this mountain have withstood the passage of time and the ambitions of man. This fact somehow makes my loss feel greater. I will miss coming home. 

The house at the end of the street, the one with the basketball hoop out front, is where I came from. The apple and plum trees that produce fruit whose flavours instill an instant nostalgia for cold autumn mornings. Christmas lights, jack o' lanterns on the front steps, snow forts, easter egg hunts, dad's vegetable garden, mom's flowers, the friendly Mountain Ash tree that rustled with, fed and shaded all kinds of creatures. I learned how to do a lay-up, ride a bike, finish my first mile, kiss a boy quietly good night in this yard, this driveway, this front step. I've mowed this lawn on sweltering August days, weeded the vast garden on buggy evenings, played every sport and made-up game imaginable with neighbourhood children, raked and burned piles of leaves on crisp fall Sundays and revelled in the vast snowy heaven of the backyard year after year. 

Inside this seemingly average family house are where most of the memories that fill my lifetime were made. Birthday parties, christmases, family get togethers, sleep overs, visitors, staff parties, a wedding. But of greatest importance are the moments that made up every day of my childhood. The sound of the basement door being slammed shut, the view down the street from the chair in the living room, the constant sound of birds outside the bathroom window, the kitchen table where we united every day for dinner, the spring smell of lilacs through the open dining room window, the evening light coming through the leaves and dancing on my bedroom wall. I remember all of this and more. It has never seemed as precious as it does in these final hours.  

With this ending I am confronted with things that I care not to think of: change, mortality, death.  I am reminded of the impermanence of it all. In just the blink of an eye, the flap of a wing, it is over and we must move on. And yet, these memories are the most important things there are, the only things that truly belong to us. How fortunate to have these memories which are constructed almost entirely of love and family, safety and laughter. How funny it is that feeling fortunate can also feel a whole lot like heartache.

There is no more time left, this is good-bye. And, a kind of a thank you,  I suppose. To my parents, my siblings, neighbours, the tree tops, gardens and mountains. To the walls of this house that have always made me sure of where I fit in this world, where I belonged. I will take it all with me, everywhere that I go.