If My Life Were A Novel: The Remodel, Part 1

This is something I wrote back in the summer while reflecting on the events occurring throughout those months. I didn't put it up at the time because I wasn't to happy with how I worded certain parts of it. I've fixed it up a bit, but kept it set in the past, because as you'll see, to change it to talking about today would require an entire re-write, and I'm not about that....so....here you go:

When my parents moved into my childhood house nearly 19 years ago, they knew that they would remodel it eventually. Eventually. Maybe when they had the money, when they had the time. But, growing up in this house I was always aware of that my mother especially dreamed of the remodel. I distinctly remember hearing her say, “Uhg, I cannot wait to replace this wallpaper” as she looked around the kitchen. She had plans for the rest of the house, but it was the kitchen that was most threatened by this dream, because it was an odd kitchen, narrow and long, whose appliances were old when we bought the house.

As a child I disliked change. And I dreaded the prospect of remodeling our house, I was very attached to the walls and the floors, the rugs and the windows that defined the space where I grew up. I had never stepped into that building as a stranger. I had only walked through those doors as a child coming home. 

Do you know how when you know a place well enough that you stop seeing the floorboards as floorboards and the rugs as rugs and the cabinets as cabinets, instead you see the layer of memories you have of that space?You see your life in that building playing out along the walls like a timeline. Here’s the floorboard that always squeaks. There’s the stain from my grape juice. That is where Storm chewed up the rug. This was the best hiding spot I ever found. That is how I saw my home. I knew how many steps it took to get up the stairs, how to navigate the halls in the dark of night. 

In short, it was my home.

And as a child, I felt that if I lost those walls and floors, those windows and rugs, that I would lose my home forever, regardless of how nice a house was built in its place.

When I was a senior in high school my parents once again began to seriously consider the remodel. This was perhaps the third time they had contacted an architect over the years. And to be honest, I didn’t think anything would come of it. But the meetings continued, and gradually it occurred to me that maybe this remodel wasn’t just going to happen eventually—it was going to happen soon. And I let this knowledge sit in the back of my mind, percolating.

One day I came home from school to find my parents in a meeting with a prospective builder, some guy they new from church. I grunted a greeting, retreated to my bedroom, and pulled out my homework. During dinner that night my parents updated my brother and I about how the meeting went, and funny thing went on in my stomach as I listened to my parents and as a few pieces fell into place.

In recent years it had become obvious to anyone looking that our house had gotten crumbly. Leaks and burst pipes occurred on a regular basis. All our appliances were gradually powering down. Doors dropped off of cabinets. Hairline crack grew inside my bedroom wall. Water damage from our leaky roof left water-color paintings on our ceiling. And one year one of those paintings grew so large that a corner of my bedroom ceiling collapsed.

Something had to be done. Good stewards would tear out the house’s skeleton and give it new bones, adding strong muscles and organs along the way to keep it alive for the rest of our occupancy of our house and everyone who lives there after it.

And then there is the matter of timing. I never talked about it with my parents, but this remodel was happening just as I was getting ready to, essentially, move out. I was going off on an adventure abroad for a year before moving to the other side of the country for four more years of school. And who knows what will happen after that.

It was obvious to me, almost from the get-go, that I would never really live in the new house. That the place my parents were building would only be home home to them and my little brother. Maybe that’s an exaggeration, and we can argue plenty about the meaning of home, but that’s how it feels. When I am sitting in Spain emailing my parents, I won’t imagine them reading these emails sitting in the kitchen of a rental home, I’ll see them sitting in the kitchen that no longer exists. I’ll imagine my little brother eating dinner all alone with Mom and Dad at the old dinner table, and wonder if maybe they will switch up the seating arrangement so that they’ll all be sitting closer together.

Then the big realization hit me: even if my childhood home stood as it always had, crumbles and all, I would not spend much time there either—I’d be away at school, on my gap year, spending my summers as a camp counselor.

I think it was in that moment that I realized that big changes were ahead of me. 

I was going to move out of my childhood home. That was already going to happen, the remodel would only make it impossible to return. But on top of that, I wasn’t going to be living with my parents much longer, which meant that my relationship with them would be forever changed. The same would happen with my relationship with my little brother. The same had already happened with my relationship to my older brother. When I think about this, I laugh, because it's so funny that everyone talks about how wonderful this 'next chapter' in college will be, but they always forget to mention that everything else changes, too.

This August, when I hug my parents goodbye and walk through airport security, passport in hand, leaving my home behind in Minnesota, I won’t just be waving goodbye to my parents for a few months, I'll be saying goodbye to that strange glorious thing we call childhood. I'll be saying goodbye to known factors, replacing them with unknowns. 

I’m moving forward into this scary and thrilling new time, but I can’t go back, for the house of my childhood is gone. 

Isn’t it strange that it takes the prospect of losing something dear to realize how close you are to already losing it?