When It’s Time To leave Home.
You watch on the outskirts of the crowd, mesmerized as the auctioneer's hammer slowly raises, pauses, and then begins to fall after his final exhortation to try and squeeze one last bid from the crowd of buyers and nosey neighbours.
The hammer hovers, and then with a little bit of theatre the auctioneer slaps the gavel into his hand and, with that sound, the home you have lived in for over twenty years suddenly passes to another. This was our house, our family home, and the place where two children were raised, where tears and laughter shared the same space but fortunately, laughter was far and away the more dominant emotion.
How excited were we when we first moved in?
Very.
We wandered around our new, empty house and planned what we would do when funds permitted. Move that wall, raise that ceiling, build that outdoor patio, and paint that room. The list went on and grew or shrank, depending on our finances or enthusiasm.
Looking around, after the crowds had left the auction, I see trees, planted as tiny saplings that now cast long shadows across the lawns having grown into sturdy structures replete with leafy canopies, providing ample shade during the height of summer.
The process now is to move on with no regrets, to discard the gardening tools that are no longer required or the leftover pots of paint, kept for touching up walls that had suffered the scuffing from an active family.
The removalists, young muscled men effortlessly lift the couches, rich with so many threads of conversations and stories woven into the fabric, and deposit them into the back of their truck, ready to be stored for another place.
Someday.
The house now is empty and echoes as I walk around it, each room devoid of our possessions, awaiting its new occupants. Wooden floors, lighter in places where rugs have lain for years sheltering the hardwood from the sunlight that pours in through the windows during summer.
The river at the bottom of the garden dapples in the late afternoon light, and on cue, expectant swans arrive, although soon I will not be there to toss them a piece of bread from the dock. Perhaps now they will go elsewhere, and wait patiently at the dock of another dwelling, hoping those occupants will do what I have done for years by feeding them diligently at the close of each day.
If I shut my eyes and listen carefully I can hear the sound of children’s laughter as they frolic in the pool, chasing each other in an endless game of Marco Polo, or squeals of delight as they follow each other, paying tag or other such childish games. Now the pool lies silent: the swimmers have grown and left to swim in other parts of the world while they plan and build their own homes.
This house will no longer play host to our parties and celebrations as it turns away from us to embrace another family's milestones and once again, hopefully, it will resonate with their children's songs and laughter. It will be strange to think of strangers around a dinner table on the patio when the sun has set and the cool of evening has arrived.
What will they talk about that was so different to us? Will they laugh a lot, their voices carrying across the waters to the far off docks of other homes? Will they dance in the moonlight, just the two of them after the guests have left and their children are asleep? .
I hope so, for now, it is their home and, over time our memories of it will fade further into the walls when another fresh coat of paint is added. We in turn will struggle to remember the layout, the smell, and the feel of a place that sheltered us for so many years in a place we called home.
So, it is time to go, to turn away and move on to another place somewhere new and, of course, it will provide its own set of experiences but the ones who lived here were well….
Simply irreplaceable!
