The freshly painted grey walls stared back at me. All of the memories had been painted over. Last summer while we were staying in a rental house, my son asked me why our house didn’t have an echo in it. The little North Portland bungalow we had spent the past 16 years in — now seemed to have a very loud echo. The hardwood floors echoed where our kids had slid across on their round tummies and then taken their first steps. The large bay window that looked out onto our front yard echoed where the labradoodle used to lay and watchfully guard her lair. The newly remodeled basement that used to be cement and studs still seemed to reverberate where years of band practices had taken place… until our evenings were gradually transformed from rocking out in the dimly lit downtown bars to gently rocking our babies to sleep and back to sleep… and back to sleep in their dimly lit bedrooms down the hall. Although the little house was empty of furniture it was completely full of memories.
When you are a kid, it’s hard to move away from the only place you’ve ever lived. This has been especially true for our twelve year old daughter. When her private school went online during the pandemic, most of her friends left for publicly funded online schools. Later many moved to neighborhoods with better high schools. For her, at the end of a year filled with crushing transition and loss, moving was just the cherry on top.
When I was little my father’s career with the USDA took off and we moved from Florida to Missouri to Indiana and then to Wyoming. All in the span of three and a half years. It was difficult to say the least and what made it worse was my dad’s insistence that there was no “Bellyaching” as he called it. No complaining. Only positive comments were allowed.
I shared this story with my daughter. I explained that for our family the rules are different. Moving is stressful and exciting — a mixture of good and bad and we will embrace it all. All comments and feelings are allowed. We will walk through the excitement, uncertainty, weirdness and fear together. I explained that in all of this change there are still things that will never change. In all the moving there are things that are immovable. The love that her mother and I share isn’t going to change. The love we have for her little brother and sister isn’t changing either. I tell her that my love for her will never change. I know that in a few short years she will be packing boxes and off to her own life. Although she will move away… the love her mother and I have for her is immovable.
Published under the title Not All is Lost in Moving in the Gillette News Record July 12, 2021