Laurie cried as she and I were driving away from our old house with the last car load of stuff. We moved only one mile east so we had made several “last” clean-up trips.
“Are you ok Laurie? You are happy about the new house aren’t you?”
Laurie said, “Glenn, I am thinking about when we brought our baby girl home from the hospital. I am thinking about the times Santa rode by on Pantego’s “Candy Cane Train”, the Easter bunny hiding eggs, about Mary and her friends singing and laughing in the living room, and about the pet bird and gerbil buried in the back yard. I am thinking about all the sad and wonderful times we shared as a young family in that home.”
We lived in our house on Silver Leaf twenty-four wonderful years and all of the sudden a waterfall of memories came back to both of us. “I hope our new neighbors will be as wonderful as the ones we are driving away from” I said.
I have been a Realtor here in Arlington since 1978, and I have helped hundreds of people sell their homes for a lot of different motivations. There are marriages, divorces, new children, retirement, promotions, illness, death, job loss, and job transfers. There are happy moves and sad moves and as I just remembered a lot of moves are a combination of the two. Our old neighbors, Philip and Nancy Hurrel, moved to Boston once their boys were out of high school, just for the adventure of it!
I sometimes forget about the memories people have tied up in the brick and mortar of a place. I hope to hold on to these special thoughts and remember that the word home has a very special meaning much greater than simply a house.
