By Living Room Realty, August 16, 2019
My sister and I recently sold our childhood home. I was brought home from the hospital to that house.
We were very lucky in some ways – we grew up in a town where the real estate market grew steadily and we sold it for more than our mother could have ever guessed when she bought the house in 1969 for $62,000.
We had plaid wallpaper and shag carpet. My parents were still together there. My first sleep-over, the tooth fairy, pre-teen angst.
We moved to another neighborhood when I was 14, and my enterprising mother rented the house out to dozens of people over the next 30 years. Students who trashed the place. Nit-picky families my mother couldn’t stand. A cult (true). More students who puked in Mr and Mrs Byrnes front lawn and crashed into light poles.
So it was with a bitter-sweet heart when I wrote to Rachel Byrne, my next door neighbor for 14 years (and my childhood crush). I hadn’t heard from her except when she friend requested me on Facebook a decade ago. I messaged her to let her know that we sold the house to what seemed like a nice family. Her crotchety old father, who still lives next door, would be happy to know it.
Rachel wrote back and had some very nice words. She still remembered our old phone number.
My sister and I have been talking about what it was like to grow up in our intense family, in that house we just sold. It’s not just memories, but some sort of DNA gets left behind in the house you grow up in.
The last link to the city I grew up in.
It’s good.
We change, we grow, we move on. What happens next?
