Not much for changes

My grandparents' house will soon be sold.

My grandmother now lives in assisted living and there is no need for the house. It is just weird to imagine my family without that house in the picture. I didn't realize everything that it represents. The last happy time I spent there, I was looking at my cousins and their children and thinking about how the house has belonged to my grandparents for over 40 years. Every one of us, from our parents down to the littlest child of my cousin, has played with toys in the living room or swung on the last bar by the steps in the basement.

We've all sat on this rock, something my grandpa had hauled home one day from his quarry.


I took a moment to just sit on that rock and think. I haven't "played" in their yard for maybe 14 years and I had forgotten things, like how that rock actually sparkles. Of course, this picture won't do it justice. But my mind looks at it and sees all sorts of metaphors.


I remember visiting before I lived in the same town and playing all the way at the bottom of the hill in the backyard. There was always a creek back there and a stone wall that I thought was really tall. When I went down there as a teenager, there was no creek and the wall hardly goes to my knee. I went down there today, of course, and there was a nice creek again.

That house watched our parents become teenagers and adults. It watched them build families of their own and we have all filled it up with laughter and chatter on holidays. It saw all of us cousins go from babies to adults and have babies of their own. It held tons of ping-pong tournaments and pool games. All of us kids have bellied up to the bar in the basement for Pepsi. We've all run in to the screened in back porch after spending a humid summer night collecting lightning bugs. I introduced my Grampa to my first boyfriend (now my husband) at that house. I've had difficult moments and happy moments in that home.

It was in the family for about 45 years. I hope that the next family keeps it for a long time and enjoys creating the infinite number of memories like we have.