Friday, July 1, 2011

Moving on...

I've always kept a big box fan in the hallway between my kids' bedrooms upstairs.  It is so loud that it blocks out just about any other noise in the house.  My kids have gotten used to the sound and it lulls them to sleep.   When they were babies it, more importantly, KEPT them asleep.

Yesterday was our last day in our "dream" house.  One of the last things I packed and sent to storage was the box fan.  It hurt a little.  Almost as if I was packing away all the memories of bedtime stories and babies napping.  Then night came.  Around 1 a.m. I headed to my room to find all four of my sweet babies sound asleep on my floor in their sleeping bags.  My heart ached.  I remembered the first night we slept in that new, big house.  It had taken Craig 1 1/2 years to build it.  He'd slept there most nights on a cot and worked day and night.  That was going to be our forever house.  We were so excited to move in that the first night we didn't even have beds.  It was just Craig, Lizzie, Gracie and I, 7 months pregnant with the twins, on the floor in our sleeping bags.  I don't think I slept more than 20 minutes that night.  But it was the silence that I remember most.  Dead. Quiet.  As my little family slept around me.

Last night was the same.  I lay there in the stillness and listened to each of them breathing.  It was so clear.  So peaceful.  I realized for the first time that the huge box fan, while serving a great purpose, had also kept me from "hearing" my kids as they slept each night.  Their sighs, their snores, their whispering dreams.

As much as I loved that beautiful house and living there, I think that it has been a huge box fan in my life for the past 5 years.  I've been so consumed with trying to keep it and the yard clean and tidy and decorated...while Craig has been overwhelmed with trying to make up for the huge hit his business took with the fall of the economy as well as doing whatever it took to pay for that big house with its big mortgage.   We'd finally had enough of that noise in our life.  It had become necessary, on many levels, to sell.

This morning we rolled up our sleeping bags.  We took one last walk through the house with the kids.  We stopped in each room sharing memories that we'd had there.  We cried and cried.  I will always love that house.  I hope I will not always feel the empty hole for it that I feel right now.  I will add this experience to my little book of "hard- things- in- life- that- I- wish -I -didn't- have- to -experience -but -know -that -I- will- learn -a- tremendous- amount- from."