Sunday, April 1, 2018

"Don't  forget: somewhere between hello and goodbye, there was love, so much love." 

How do you say good-bye to a place you have known all of your life? 40 years, my entire life I have known the house located in St. Anne, Illinois as home. Today I will go back one more time, and my struggle is how do I say good-bye. We will pull off the interstate and I will travel the most familiar roads I know. I will pass landmark after landmark with a thousand stories behind them. I will pass house after house that holds childhood memories of friends who used to live there. I will pass a small dilapidated barn on my left, go over a small hill and a few houses down will be my home. I will pull in the driveway and the memories will flood my mind. So many that I will never be able to write them all down. I will pull in a driveway that is now paved, but growing up it was gravel. I will see myself and my siblings riding our bikes. I will see myself trying to walk on the rocks without hurting my feet. I will see an old green Chevy sitting in the driveway. I will see myself waiting for the school bus or playing basketball with my neighbor. I will see myself running to the mailbox and tripping and breaking my wrist. I will remember pulling out of that driveway the first time I was learning to drive. I will see my sister's car suspended in the ditch from the time she missed the driveway. Just from a short patch of gravel, there are too many memories to write.

I will look at our front yard and remember playing there with my brother and sister. I will remember when the two young saplings were planted in the yard, and now are strong grown trees. I will see my brother and I spending all day making a snowman and it was the best snowman I have ever made. I will see us playing baseball in the yard with the Hollis boys and a ball being hit across the road. I will hear my brother say, "Go! Go!" and thinking he was talking to me I would run out into that road and just miss being hit by a car. I see us trying to balance on the piece of metal sticking out of the ground from where the well is located. I see a big snake curled up in the corner of the house and my dad killing it with a hoe and remember the blood on the sidewalk.  I will see the window from the bedroom that my sister and I used the pool ladder to climb into because we were locked out of the house. I will look at the front door and know that as soon as it opens I would be entering my perfect comfort zone.
The front door will open and I will feel the magnitude of the fact that I was carried through this door frame the day I was brought home from the hospital. I will see the far wall covered in a wallpaper that is made to look like trees line the wall. This wall would become a conversation piece to all who would enter our house and would be what people would talk about to describe our living room. The original wallpaper would get old and my mom replaced it with another nature setting wallpaper. Several years ago she would remove that wallpaper and would paint the wall the same color as the other walls, making us all a little sad.  I will see my brother and sister and I playing. I see faces of so many family and friends that have been to our house. I see birthday parties. So many birthday parties. I see a pallet of blankets on the floor that my sister and I used to wrestle on. I see my dad laying on the couch watching the news and I am sitting on him as he watches. I see myself standing on my head. I did that a lot! I would watch TV upside down. I would spin on my head (the break dance move) in that living room all the time. I see my sister laying by the heat vent to dry her hair or just to get warm every morning before school. I see familiar movies and TV shows that seemed to be on repeat at different times in our life. I see The Princess Bride, Beauty and the Beast, Rags to Riches, and my obsession with Animaniacs. It was in this very living room that I feel in love with the Chicago Cubs and players like Ryne Sandberg, Mark Grace, Shawon Dunston, and Derrick Lee. I remember being called in from outside because the Bulls were on. I grew up watching Michael Jordan in that living room! I remember piling in the living room on hot summer nights because the only air we had was a window unit in the kitchen. I see late night sleepovers with friends. I see so many people doing little nets.  I remember so many memories of people in that living room, too many that it makes my heart hurt because I miss those days so much. I remember so many Christmas times that were celebrated in this room. I see the day that Kevin and his family were moving to Tennessee. I see two of the saddest boys I have ever seen. They were so young, but they did not want to leave Grandma's house. I can almost still feel the heartache of this day. How do I say good-bye?

I will walk into the kitchen/dining room next. I will see so much food and sense so much laughter in these rooms. I will see family dinners, more birthday and graduation celebrations. I will see my mom making her famous pizza or her sugar cookies. I will picture the kitchen of my childhood, not necessarily the way it looks now. I will see my Grandma by the small counter by the fridge and oven making me some chicken and dumplings. I will see missionaries sitting at our table telling stories of far off places. I still can see Bro. Clint Morgan telling about a monkey pulling out Mrs. Lynnette's newly planted flowers. I can hear my mom yelling at people not to plug anything into the air conditioning outlet. I remember standing on a chair by the sink to watch my mom do dishes. I remember on one occasion the chair breaking and I fell and broke my collarbone. I see this huge stereo system cabinet in the kitchen. I can see my mom opening it up and seeing the radio, the record player, and the 8 track system! I see my dad trying to make toast in the oven one time my mom was in the hospital. I remember telling my dad he was going to burn the toast. I remember him burning the toast.I see my sister hitting me with a frozen chicken, I see her dropping a chicken potpie down the side of the oven and then asking me if I would eat that one. I remember playing games around the kitchen table. I remember so much laughter in this room. One night we were up late talking and laughing with my Grandma and aunts and cousins. My Grandpa came out of my parent's room to tell us to keep it down. He had my Grandma's robe on and we busted in even more laughter. I see Kaleb standing at the back door watching the train way in the distance go by. I hear his little voice, "Choo Choo.' I see myself huddled in the corner of the kitchen waiting for the tornado sirens to go off or we would be heading to the crawl space. I remember being so scared and my dad was fast asleep in his room. My mom tried to wake him and I think his response was, "Well if it's my time to go..." Once again, how do I say good-bye?

I will walk down the hallway and think of stretching the phone cord from the kitchen all the way down that hallway to my room. I remember the night that my nightmare of the Incredible Hulk started in the living room and I walked down that hallway still seeing the bad guys shooting at me. I would finally make it to the room my parents were sleeping in (we had company staying over) and crawling in the bed. I woke up the next morning with a mouth full of fever blisters from the stress of my nightmare. I pass the bathroom. I don't remember this happening, but when I was little we were about to go somewhere and I guess my mom got me dressed and I fell into the bathtub full of water. My mom did the natural thing and get her camera to capture my terrifying moment. In our bathtub we had (like all old homes) the tile and then the soap holder in the middle of the wall. I used to grab hold to the metal thing and use my feet to climb up the tub wall. Well, one day the wall could not hold me and I brought the tile down with me in the tub. As I got older I had really hairy legs and I wanted to shave so bad but my mom said I was too young. I took matters into my own hands and decided to shave them without telling my mom. It would of worked if I hadn't cut myself 20 times. I remember sitting in the bathroom floor feeling like I was bleeding to death, but more afraid of telling my mom I had disobeyed. I decided to try and lie and tell her I had fallen on the razor. Yeah, she didn't believe me. Most of my teenage years was just fighting over the bathroom.

Next I see my parent's room. The door that got stuck when you tried to open it and you had to pull up on the handle to close. The room that I would sneak into when I was scared or sick. I would tap my dad on the shoulder. He would get up and go into my bed and I would crawl in bed with my mom. I remember seeing the weird wallpaper and I remember seeing hot pink lipstick or nail polish or some kind of stain on part of the wall. My parents had this dark furniture with this weird pattern. My sister probably doesn't remember this, but one Sunday afternoon after church I wanted to put something I had been taught  at church into practice. We had talked about telling the devil, "Get behind me Satan!". So I decided to practice my telling off Satan in my parent's bedroom mirror. Unbeknownst to me my sister was in the hallway. She opened the door and was like what in the world are you doing? I lied. She then told me that I needed to practice more because obviously I had not put Satan behind me.

Then there is my brother's room, turned my sister's room,  turned the office, and finally turned the cat's room. I have zero memory of what my brother's room looked like until he got a water bed and we thought it was the coolest thing ever. He is 6 years older than me, so it wasn't long before he was off to high school and then out of the house. This room became my sister's room. I remember it being lined with Beauty and the Beast items. I remember loving when she was gone so I could sleep on the water bed. I remember waiting in this room with Kaleb the night we were waiting for Kraig to be born.

Before I talk about the last room in the house, I cannot say good-bye without thinking about the backyard. The place that we played kick-ball, made mud pies on the tree stump that was left after the big tree had to be cut down. I cannot help but remember the garden and the wild strawberries that grew. The corn stalks that grew high every other summer and the strict warning to never go in the corn fields. I can see the little pool that was set up in the back for a few summers. I can picture the time my Uncle Mike and Aunt Rose came and my cousins, Josh and Mandie. We had been swimming most of their visit. We had gotten home from somewhere and they were about to head back to Michigan. My cousins begged to swim one more time and my Uncle Mike says, "Ok, but hurry up!" I can picture tents in the back yard when many of our family members came for my dad's ordination. I can see myself holding the water hose and running water into a hole. A bunch of little animals started jumping out of hole and I started screaming. I thought they were mice, but then realized that they were bunnies. I can see my dad or brother pulling us around on a sled when it snowed. I picture in my mind the last 13 years seeing my own children run and play in this backyard.

So now I come to the hardest room to say good-bye to. My bedroom. The bedroom that I shared with my sister until my brother moved out. I can see the Strawberry Shortcake pictures on the wall. I can picture falling asleep each night holding the end of my sister's pillow. I believed that is someone tried to take me I would wake my sister up and she would save me or something. I can picture when we got twin beds but my sister refused to sleep in her bed. She made a pallet on the floor and slept between the two beds. The room was decorated with all kinds of dogs on her side and my side more updated with pop culture (well what I could get away with). We shared this room until my brother left, but until that day the room was filled with fights, lots and lots of fighting. One day I got so  mad at her I ran and jumped on her back and drew blood from where I had bitten her. We really didn't play any of the same games, but we found one common interest, the red record player in which we played the Cabbage Patch Kid record over and over and over again. When she moved to another room this bedroom became my sanctuary, my comfort zone, my escape, my place to think and contemplate the ways of the world. I would paint my room red. Bright red, walls and the ceiling. My dad was worried it would make me angry. I would soon transform my room into a Mickey Mouse lovers dream. I can still see the lights from the road shining in my windows. I can still remember laying awake if my dad was out somewhere. I wouldn't fall asleep until I saw his car lights pull into the driveway.I would spend most of my time in my room mostly attached to my phone. I talked on the phone every chance I could get. Which is weird because now I hate talking on the phone. The thing I would get in trouble for the most is running up a phone bill. It also didn't help that I only liked boys that lived far away 😝. I remember staying up all night talking to friends sleeping over or talking on the phone. It was in this room that shaped most of my emotional life. In this room I would feel the sting of rejection as I would wrestle with how to deal with boys liking someone better than me or girls who were my friends who turned out to not be true friends. It would be in this room that I would learn to pray and how to study God's Word. In this room that I would picture what my life would like. What my future husband would be like, what my children would look like. What would God have planned for my life. I feel like so many memories are trapped within those walls. Life really hasn't turned out like anything I planned all those years, but I the Lord still brings me back to living in that bedroom and the promises that He revealed to me all those years ago.

There is so much I could say. I don't think I have enough time to jot down all the memories that are filling my mind. Tomorrow as I drive away from my childhood home I am sure there will be tears. I have already warned my kids that I might be a mess. This is hard. Maybe it would be even harder if my heart was not already so broken. So much in life is changing right now and this change is pretty drastic. I am thankful with all the changing things in life the Lord never changes. The Lord is faithful. If anything I have learned growing up in this house is that our Lord is good. I am thankful that I have had an amazing childhood growing up in a place that is making it so hard to say good-bye. So I will spend one last night in my childhood home. I hold tight to all the memories and look forward to a future of making new memories.