my homeTonight was rough for me. I had a very light and sound sensitive headache, I didn’t have enough sleep to function normally, and to go along with this, I was being very emotional. A few things that hadn’t really been bothering me too much, came to the surface and were NOT GOING TO BE IGNORED ANY LONGER!

Let me preface this by saying I am a very sentimental person, and admitting this makes me cringe. I keep notes, pictures, receipts, ticket stubs, found objects, I don’t even part with blurry photographs. I’ve always been this way, and I suspect I always will (though I’m never keeping my kid’s foreskin in a baby book). I once tied a string from a dog’s rope toy around a cabinet’s handle in our living room. I didn’t want to forget this sweet, playful dog, Rudy. I knew we couldn’t keep him, but I knew I didn’t want to forget him. For some reason, I have a deep fear of losing memories because the places, people, and objects they involved are now gone.

It has been almost a year since my dad left. Many things have changed, one of those being my feelings about it all. For the first few months I was devastated, I was heartbroken, I was depressed, and I was pissed. I felt like I was grieving for the loss of my parent’s marriage. It’s gotten easier though, and everyone has pretty much reconciled with my father, though no issues have been resolved. My parents have remained good friends, which is an interesting dynamic to observe. It’s almost as it’s always been, just with a few elephants in the room. We all try to pretend it’s the same when we’re together, that dad’s not going back to his own apartment, he’s just going to the YMCA…for weeks a time.


But we can only pretend these things for so long. We’re going to sell our house, which is located in Green Hills, a part of Nashville that has recently become overrun with “duplexes” which translates to: too many houses on one lot, connected by a wall. They’re able to cram these huge houses, “McMansions”, if you will, on an acre of land, no yards, just driveways and that extremely important wall that allows them to call these monstrosities duplexes. It’s ugly, it’s taking away character, and sadly, it’s the only option we have. We have to sell to a contractor or a developer, I don’t know what they’re called.

To prepare our house for the open market would be a huge undertaking. We’d have to fix the roof, the basement, the leaks in the ceiling, the cracks in the foundation, the gas leak I’m convinced we have, the carpets would have to go, the mold on our ceilings, and make so many other improvements. Our house is in a desirable neighborhood, but is in less than desirable condition, and we just don’t have the time, money, or manpower to do all these things, things that will probably just elevate it to a moderate to poor condition.

I’d love for someone to buy this house, do repairs and make it beautiful, add on, and sell it for a profit. In all likelihood, this won’t happen, and instead, it would be bulldozed, cleared of trees and made into a wonderful group of duplexes. They might be able to fit four or five “McMansions” on our half acre alone! The idea of someone tearing down the tulip poplar my dad and I planted in the front yard and watched it grow over the years, or our above the ground pool, the site of many moonlit swims, many pool parties (in my brother’s case, many drunken pool parties), or the treehouse in the back yard where I played house with my first friend in Nashville, or the patch of concrete I played four-square on, or the basketball hoop used whenever my brother and I or father and I decided to go one on one, it hurts.

What if I start forgetting? What if I forget the way my mother swam at night with me as a kid, able to carry me for the first time in years since she got sick? What if I forget the days my dad and I spent outside, reading books by the pool? Or the time when we actually had snow and I made a tiny snowman to put on our front porch? Or the Halloweens we decorated the porch and carved pumpkins, anticipating the arrival of the one or two trick-or-treaters we might have? What if I forget to the point where I can only remember the lies, deceit, and heartbreak we endured.

It’s as if moving out of this place, makes it all real. We can’t pretend anything is how it was. We can’t pretend anymore. It’s all going to be real and new and frightening. It’s been nearly a decade since we moved here, that’s over half of my life I’ve spent making memories here, and I’m so scared that as soon as I leave it’s all going to be gone, and it’s all going to be real.

I want to be able to come back to where I grew up, I want to show my children the home I loved so much. I want to relive the memories, the sounds, the feelings. I even had this fairytale plan to live in this house until college, then buy it from my parents whenever I had a family of my own. We’d add on and let mom and dad live in a guest house, that way my kids could always have extra people who loved them around. It would be a centralized meeting place for our family, a place where my sister and brother and their spouses and children could come and we’d have barbecues and birthdays, reunions. We’d make the treehouse even cooler and bigger, add a slide for the pool, and we’d watch our kids play from the patio, eating, drinking, and reminiscing on our own adolescence, spent right on this very lot.

And that day, far off in the future, when it’s only us kids, after mom and dad have passed on, we’d talk about them, how good they were to us, to everyone we brought into this house, their generosity, and strength. How did they manage to stay married for fifty years when everyone else was getting divorced? They were truly something special, we’d say, proof that true love exists. Now this fairytale is just that, a fairytale. It will never come to fruition.

The saying goes home is where the heart is, but I’m afraid I’ll leave part of mine right here.