Two weeks ago my parents mentioned
that they were planning to put their house up for sale. Last week they emailed
to say they officially listed it. Yesterday it sold. And while my mother and father are celebrating
this quick turn-around with champagne and high-fives, I would like to stop the
party train and acknowledge an abrupt loss of personal history.
My family thinks I'm
crazy. They can't identify anything upsetting about this. My mother feels she's
being relieved of four thousand square feet of cleaning. My father feels he's being
relieved of an acre of landscaping. My
three brothers unanimously agree that they feel nothing at all and don't know why I'm so affected. To be honest, I don't know why I'm so affected,
either. All I can come up with is that my time in that house fell at a unique point
in my personal chronology. We moved there when I was a freshman in high school.
The house we left was the house I was raised in and so the move, for me,
coincided with my cross-over from childhood to maturity. The new house was a
clean slate and was the backdrop for all my "coming of age"
experiences. I shed my childhood twin bed and progressed to a large adult
bedroom that I decorated with pictures of Grace Kelly, my grandmother's writing
desk and a vanity where I could do my hair and makeup away from the
bathroom I shared with three boys. I could entertain friends, do my homework,
write in my journal. I landed my very first job working at Marshalls and filled
my double closet with all the latest trends, bought with my own money. I was
given my own phone jack and for the first time in my life could take personal
calls in private. I became a lady in that bedroom.
What's more, I became an
artist in that bedroom. There, I timidly rehearsed my first significant
audition, making the cut for my high school's prestigious theatre program. Later,
I drilled solos for the summer company I toured with and, later still, confidently
prepared to sing the National Anthem at a ten thousand seat stadium. For years
I paced that bedroom running through monologues, recitations, choral pieces and
musical numbers. I practiced choreography, memorized lines and assembled
costumes. It's the bedroom where I packed my Caboodle with stage makeup and hair
accessories and cassettes of vocal exercises. It's the bedroom where I pasted
scrapbooks of every production I did and it's the bedroom where I lay awake
staring at my poster of the New York City skyline, fantasizing about a future in which I would command a world class stage, never anticipating that that might one day
be in the realm of possibility.
I haven't lived in that
house for a very long time. Since moving West, I barely even visit. For my
brothers, this has been enough to erode their attachment but for me there's
still a filament that connects me to that bedroom and losing it feels like
losing the dreamer who emerged there. I know that sounds melodramatic and, yes,
it's just a house. Home is where the heart is and I'll get over it soon enough but
for now... for now, I'm sad.
