It's so weird.
Yesterday was quite possibly the last time I will ever set foot in the house where I have spent the largest portion of my life.
In the fall of 1998 my family moved back to Virginia after having lived in Kansas for the last three and a half years. Why did we live in Kansas for three and a half years? Because that's all we could take.
We had the chance to move back and we took it. Some friends of ours were moving and the house that they were renting was available for a ridiculously good deal. I won't even tell you what my parents paid a month for rent. It was that good. So here we are moving into our friends old house, which happened to be owned by a lady my mom went to school with. My parents also knew the people who lived there before, and one Sunday we ended up visiting a church who's pastor had lived there before them. So yeah, we know the owner and the past three renters. Plus, it was blocks away from the house we lived in before we moved to Kansas in the first place.
I went to college out of state from '06 to '08 but when I got back I moved back in. I moved out again when I got married in 2010. Aside from that, and a couple other sibling marriages, my family has lived in that house from 1998 to 2013. I know that's no record or anything, it's just going to be strange now.
My parents bought a house. My wife and I are looking for a house. My sister and her husband and my brother and his wife are house hunting. I have another sister who will be married soon.
It was so strange walking around the house the other day. I had to collect the last of the stuff that I had left in my parent's attic. (There was a lot of it) Most of my parent's things were gone. The house echoed and the floors creaked, and those creaks echoed too. There are still things all over the place. Old furniture that belonged to the house when we moved in. The estate sale people have already been there. The only reason the owner hasn't sold already is she didn't want to kick my family out. The estate sale people have moved stuff from other estate sales in to sell it along with all of the things in the house. It was really odd seeing all of this unfamiliar furniture in my parent's house.
Whenever they have the estate sale I plan on going. I know it's going to be incredibly strange but I wouldn't miss it. It will be interesting to see what they pull out of the attic. It's always been filled with stuff. Things left by the original owners, and by numerous renters who just didn't feel like taking their stuff with them when they left. My dad tried to clean it out once but eventually gave up. Instead we just had a little corner of it for our things. Mind you a corner in that monstrous attic was still sizable. Of course, I also have my eye on a couple things that might be at the estate sale. There was a ring of skeleton keys that I would love to have. Why? Because that's just cool. There was a huge vice in the basement I would love to have, and an old sword that I've wanted to get my hands on for a while. Who knows what other treasures were hidden in that house.
Whatever treasures there are though, there will be no more Landrum family parties. No more piano music every night. No more drama camp meetings. No props built or costumes sewn. The foyer will not be a place where craftiness happens. The kitchen will no longer be the place where the most delicious coconut cake you have ever tasted in your life comes from.
Thank goodness all that stuff will still happen in a different house though. I think of myself as being the type of person who doesn't get overly sentimental about things. Then I start getting overly sentimental. It's good to remember that what made that house so special wasn't the house itself, but the people in it. Even though they won't be in that house anymore nothing about them will change. We'll get used to having parties in a different house. Piano music will fill a different house every night. And if the most delicious coconut cake I have ever tasted doesn't start coming out of a different kitchen, so help me, we're going to have problems.
Life goes on.
Later Days.
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