If These Walls Could Talk

Well, I am officially in Indiana.  Once Carl is here for good as well, we can start looking for a nice place in the city (crossing our fingers for Wrigleyville area) that works for us and our two crazy dogs.

I'm pretty sure I had the best last week in North Carolina possible!  Carl and I grilled, cooked, and baked for our friends and I got to see everyone several times.  I even stopped in at work to say bye one last time.  After all that, I thought I was very prepared to pull out of our driveway early Thursday morning.

I was not.  I stood in the driveway for a few minutes and when we finally drove away I definitely teared up.  Growing up I always heard my aunts and uncles refer to significant events in their lives based on what house they were living in at that point in time.  Like "Oh, he was born when we lived at [insert address here.]"  And now I totally get it.


Carl and I lived there when we got engaged and when we got married.  It's the first house we made a home together, the house in which we hosted our first holiday gathering as a married couple, where we had backyard barbeques and bonfires.  It's where I watched my husband pack up his gear to deploy to Afghanistan twice, where I lived alone going through those two deployments, where I anxiously and happily waited to get a phone call and hear his voice from overseas.  Our house has seen me make wonderful friends and as such is the military life, it's also seen me tell those amazing friends that I will keep in touch as either they or I move away.  311 Providence Drive will also be the only house we owned that we'll be able to say all four of our parents visited.  That house is where I lived when my dad started chemo and where I cried when I got the call he only had days left.  It feels like that house has seen so many big events in my life.  It's even the only house that Lolli has known as a home with us.

I have so many memories there.  I remember wedding planning notes and magazine clippings everywhere; sitting upstairs addressing our save-the-dates and then our invitations.  My wedding dress waited for our big day in a closet there.  I would wander in the guest bedroom and unzip the bag thinking I could not wait to wear it!  This house also holds the closet in which I stood there speechless, motionless, staring at all of my black clothes when I was packing to see my dad for the last time.  Wondering what was appropriate to pack for my dad's funeral while he was still alive.  Wondering what to pack for Carl's unplanned Red Cross return from deployment.

I could go on and on listing memories all day, so I'll just say that 311 Providence Drive probably held every possible emotion from me.  It has seen tears and loss.  But it has also seen friendships, families, laughter, and love in every room.  Now I'll probably be one of those people that says "Oh, that happened when we lived at 311 Providence" and I'll know exactly why people connect their addresses with significant events in there lives.