my favorite part of college is the end of fall semester. finals are over and i don't have to work and i can just go home and veg for two weeks and just... enjoy the feeling of christmas and being with my family. unfortunately this year... it was very different. i'm still not sure how i feel about it...
a few weeks ago my family was so wonderful to fly to utah to see me and my older brother in our different performances the first weekend. i had my folk dance show and evan had his choir concert. that sunday was our grandma's birthday so we got to have all of my dad's side together for a night. that was really nice :)
saturday night after our shows, evan and i drove to stay the night at my grandma's house. i always love sleeping at my grandma's! i head straight for the m&m jar, then make my way back to grandma's tv room to give her a big hug. i am the only child that gets an actual room to sleep in - the boys get pull-out couches, haha.
sunday morning, my parents walked in at 8:30am to wake me up, but they could tell i was exhausted. i had set my alarm for 9, and though i heard them come in, i pretended to still be asleep - because that's where i wanted to be. they let me sleep until 9, then they came in to wake me up again. as they left, they told me to hurry out so they could talk to us. i had no idea what was going on, but was too tired to really care. i plopped down on the chair in grandma's piano room, half-awake. i forget whether it was mom or dad that said it all...
they sold our house. sold it. their initial plan was to come and just tell us that the house was on the market (like it had been the past two months...) they found out in the airport on their way to utah that it had sold. the sale was closing the end on january and... they were looking for a place to move to, but all the houses they initially wanted were sold out from under them. they weren't sure what they were going to do.
i just sat there. i couldn't look at my parents. i had so many thoughts racing, i could't stop one for a second to make sense of it. i just sat there in tears. there was no way to hide it, either. i looked up at my mom for a second and she felt my pain. i hate to say it, but i don't think my mother had felt pain in this situation until then. she never really liked the house, i don't think. she had been wanting to move for years. and it didn't take her long after remodeling the kitchen to continue to complain about the house and how small it was... i wanted to be able to bring my children home to the house that i grew up in -- just like my dad did. he lived in my grandma's house every single day until he went to college. another reason i love this house so much is because when i'm here... i feel like ryan is here. there are so many memories of him around the house: the dent in the wall where he hit his head on the wall; the pantry where he would stand and eat cereal shamelessly; the stain on the carpet where he opened my yellow medicine bottle and dumped it all over... not to mention the neighbors that know our family - even ryan - and our history. mom knew i would be upset... evan seemed bummed, but all he said was "its just a house..." all sean could do was talk about the pool they were gonna get...
since the house was on the market, they told us that when we came home for christmas, things were going to be different. first of all, there's the monstrous and depressing sign out front... thankfully, there's not a SOLD sign at the bottom. i don't know where it is, but i don't think i could handle it if it were there... furniture is in storage; things are moved around to make it more 'spacious'. christmas is mostly still in boxes; all of the decorations just made the house look 'cluttered'. pictures of christ and our family and history had been removed from the walls; the white walls were to 'reflect more light' and 'make it more personable' for others - like its their blank canvas or something.
as sad as it was to hear it, it was nice to have the warning. had i come home and been given no warning, there would have been... who knows what kind of a reaction. i must admit though, one of my favorite things about coming home for christmas is going from no christmas decorations to an overwhelming amount. but not this year... no lights outside. no carolers. no lights above the kitchen cabinets. not even christmas music... I KNOW! my mom wanted a new display case for the TV and other such things... so my dad built one and painted it black. it looks very nice but... then they decided to get a new TV. which really isn't the problem... the problem is that my mom hated the sound system that we had, so she had my dad take it down. its currently sitting in the garage... so we have no way to listen to our christmas music. we can play one CD at a time on the blu-ray player... but that's it. its just... not the same.
that's something i keep saying to myself this time around. about a lot of things. not just the house, not just christmas. construction is always being done in tucson; its always changing and it hasn't been the same since i left. every time i come home, i have fewer friends to spend time with. not that i don't enjoy time with my family but... there are so many memories of friends as i drive and think of other past memories and i'd love to at least catch up with old friends but... none of them seem interested. and even the ones that are still here and could possibly be interested... married. marriage gets the best of all of 'em. gah.
i just wish i'd had one last normal, traditional christmas in this house, knowing it would be that last. i would give anything for that.
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