We sold our old house this week. I drove by it on the way to work on Thursday morning–staring at the orange door, knowing it was no longer mine to unlock.
I know that house will start showing up in my dreams soon. And it will probably make me dream-cry. Does anyone else cry in their dreams? I cry in my dreams sometimes and it’s this desperate, howling cry because my dream self is messy and doesn’t know how to shove her emotions back down inside.
I dream about my dad’s house sometimes–that one doesn’t make me cry. We sold it after he died, and I was happy to see it go. I drive by it sometimes when I’m visiting my hometown and feel only a sense of satisfaction that someone else is in there now and I never have to walk through that door again. That house could be an entire blog post on its own. I’ll summarize it for now by saying that all the good years with my dad were in other homes, and most of my good memories of him take place around a campfire or on a boat.
I dream about my grandparents’ house a lot too. The house that I still think of as “the new house” as opposed to “the old house” where they lived for forty years and my mother grew up. I remember the old house but apparently have no emotional attachment to it; I can’t recall a single dream I’ve had about it. I could draw you a floorplan of the old house but wouldn’t have many memories to affix to any rooms.
But their new house is full of stories and memories. The pull-out couch in the sewing room where my sister and I always slept, and the strange selection of Christian books that I didn’t even realize were Christian until years later when I had read them all seven times. The tiny shower in the guest room always well-stocked with Pert Plus and vintage towels. The hallway closet that had games and puzzles in it but the one you were looking for was never there for some reason. And my grandparents, always sitting at the table in the dining room with their newspapers spread out around them.
I could go on about that house for an entire blog post too. And the fields around it, and the driveway, and the garage. Even the drawers in that kitchen are stuffed full of memories for me. So when I do dream about that house I tend to get overwhelmed. I wander around weeping, especially when I round the corner of the living room to search for them in the dining room and all I can find is a small stack of yesterday’s newspaper and a deck of cards. And then the dream starts to fade and I grasp at it thinking if I could just stay a little longer…
Place ties me to memory, whether I like it or not. Here I am visiting my grandparents in 2012, sitting in the same spot on the uncomfortable couch and looking at the same issue of Reminisce magazine from 1995 that I have read probably ten times now. No time has passed, and my childhood plays out forever right here in this living room in the Yakima Valley.
But what does that mean when I won’t ever see that couch again, or that issue of Reminisce magazine? I used to be able to reach out and touch the past, or at least graze it with my fingertips. Now there’s nothing left to touch.
My emotions around selling our first home haven’t settled into place yet, but I am predicting the weepy kind of dreams. Some of the best and worst years of my life happened in that house. I am not exaggerating when I say that every floorboard and doorknob and lightbulb in that house has a memory attached to it. A lot of those memories are going to fade away now.
The day before we closed the sale I stood in the front yard and looked up. The branches of the river birch are touching the window in the little bedroom again. We had them trimmed about ten years ago, and they are due for another trim. I used to sit inside, in the glider by that window, trying to get my oldest to sleep when he was baby, staring at the leaves pressed against the window while I hummed Peace Like a River over and over and over again. I had forgotten, until I saw those leaves on the window again. Someone else will have them trimmed now.
And I will forget over and over and over again.