A Scene in My Life: The Move

For the first time that I could remember, I was packing up all of my stuff and moving.  My mom and stepdad had bought a house in town and we were in the process of packing up everything and moving it.  That was the day all of the heavy furniture was leaving.  That was also the day that I would see the rooms of my childhood house completely empty.

I remember my mother telling me that I didn’t have to help with the move.  She rolled her eyes and gave a little huff, “You might get in the way,” she said.  But I wouldn’t listen.  At fourteen, I thought I would be fine.  I could help, and I’d get to be in our home a little while longer.

The moving men came in and took out the heavy Amish oak furniture from my parent’s room first.  They broke down the headboard and wooden rails, carrying them down the stairs and into the bed of their enormous truck.  I stood by and watched as my mom flitted back and forth from room to room, carrying more boxes of small knick-knacks and books to our cars.

Next, the movers went to my room, strapping down my large maple vanity with two mirrors attached to a larger center one that would swing on their hinges and bang against the wood.  After moving that furniture piece, my pale, pink rose-colored wall looked empty.  They then came for my bed, metal bedrails clanking as they carried it down the stairs as well.  Mom and some of the movers carried out the headboard and the nightstand next. 

That’s when I lost it.

I was standing in the middle of the room, looking at the bare walls when I broke down.  The ugly white carpet with large Victorian roses that I had always hated was uncovered, stripped of my furniture and immature Beanie Baby stand.  I felt the inoffensive carpet was mocking me.  The pale pink walls were unadorned; certificates from elementary school had been taken down the weeks before, my ribbons from my two-year stint in gymnastics packed away.  My pictures of family and friends were in boxes, loaded into cars or already in the new house.  This room, with the hideous carpet and blank walls, wasn’t my room anymore.  It was somebody else’s.  Some other little girl would get to grow up in my room, play in my closet and lose her Barbie dolls somewhere in the corner of my room.

The beads that used to hang from my ceiling were no longer there.  They didn’t make the obnoxious “clank” sound when I walked by, or catch a strand of my hair.  I was crying softly at first, but the more I thought about everything that had happened in that house, in that room, it hit me: there weren’t going to be any more memories there.  After that, the sobs came.

My mom could hear me crying, and when she saw me, she said go to the bathroom.  We walked through her and my stepfather’s old room.  Everything was gone there, too.  The picture that hung above their bed, of a little girl playing in a creek, now hung somewhere in our new house.  And as I walked through their room to the back bathroom, I started crying even harder.  I’m not normally an overly emotional person, but the move hit me hard.  Someplace I had spent so much time, my sanctuary, my haven, was no longer mine to own.

I sat down in the bathroom and let it out.  My mother shut the door so I couldn’t see the empty bedroom beyond.  I couldn’t stop crying no matter how much I tried.  I heard the movers go through room after room taking all of the material objects that marked my history, my growth, out of my home and into some foreign living space that was about as personal and familiar as a hotel room.

After everything was out of the house, and the movers had left, and my home was no longer my home, but what we called “the old house,” my mom came and fetched me from the floor of the bathroom.  I was curled up into a little ball, a habit I revert back to when I’m really upset.  She told me it was done, and that it was time to go.  She let me cry a little bit more, which for my mom was a huge act of kindness and understanding.

I slowly uncurled myself, got up, and walked out of the bathroom door.  Once I saw the barren room again the tears began pouring.  I cried down the stairs and out the front door.  I cried in the car on the way to our new living area.

To this day, I still think of that house as my home.  Even after a lovely young couple, with a baby girl only about a year younger than I was when my parents first bought that house, moved in.  We’ve driven by it a couple of times.  The swing-set that my father built is still there, but the stack of wood for the fireplace is in a different place. 

The first time we drove by I couldn’t help but start crying.  After four years it’s still a sore topic, and one I try not to think about too much.