I cannot believe it has been over two years since I last wrote here. I have been writing, but I have been so passionate about Lost Sheep of the Church, the blog I told you about in my last post, that I guess I forgot about this blog. When you are just living your life day-to-day, it is human nature to not fully appreciate how much is going on. But when you zoom out and look at the big picture of life in terms of years, you realize a lot has happened. This is exactly what I am experiencing as I write this. Much has changed since I last wrote here over two years ago. I think I mentioned in passing that I was expecting a niece. Well, she was born in December 2023. She is now walking—make that running—and she makes us smile every day when my sister calls us on FaceTime and lets her hold the phone and “talk” to us. Her words are mostly unintelligible still, although she can say a couple words clearly—“doggie” and “uh-oh.” But she jabbers a lot, so we think she will have a lot to say once she can really talk. And at the end of August, she got a little brother whom she absolutely adores. More on that later. I still live with my parents, but the day my little nephew was born, our address officially changed.
For years, my parents talked about moving. They each watched old age sneak up on their parents who lived in houses they could no longer manage, and they always said they didn’t want to make the same mistake. Our house too would have been impossible to manage, or even live in safely in old age. We had a two acre yard that had to be mowed, a long driveway to shovel when it snowed, and a tri-level that had no bathroom on the main level. The thought of leaving my childhood home, the only home I ever knew, made me sad, but every time Grandma came over for a holiday dinner in recent years, I understood what my parents were getting at. When Grandma needed to use the bathroom, it was a risky operation, with her holding tight to the rail and slowly, painstakingly going downstairs, with my dad standing close behind praying she didn’t fall, and then repeating the process to get back upstairs to join us again. Our neighborhood also had no sidewalks or walking trails. Our country road was quiet most of the time, but it was the kind of street where people don’t expect pedestrians, and over the years, we had come perilously close to being run over on a couple occasions as people would come around a curve and not see us until the last moment, or drive way too fast down our street. Understandably, my parents were not comfortable with me taking walks independently on our street. My sweet guide dog Gilbert saw me through college and my first job, but when he had to be put to sleep in December 2020, Occupaws determined understandably that if I was now working from home, and home was still in a neighborhood with no sidewalks, these life circumstances wouldn’t give a guide dog enough work or exercise. So in recent years, I was beginning to appreciate on a personal level the bittersweet necessity of moving someday so that I could enjoy greater independence as well. But I was starting to wonder if we ever really would move.
For years, my parents would attend an annual Parade of Homes event in our area where builders would showcase homes, and discuss what they liked and didn’t like about current home building trends. On the way home from church or errands, they would detour and drive through random subdivisions, assessing if it was somewhere they could see us living. They would even point out houses they liked, though unfortunately, they were not for sale. But moving was always something we discussed in abstract, hypothetical terms. Though my parents intellectually knew that we should move before they had no choice, before the discussion could get too serious, they would talk about how much work and stress is involved in moving. “You literally have to pick up and hold, and make a decision about every single thing you own,” Mom liked to say. Then in February 2024, Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Thankfully, it was a kind that was well researched, with a standardized treatment protocol. She had to have surgery and radiation, but blessedly was able to avoid chemo, and is completely cancer-free now. But through my own medical scares, I understand what it is like to have life brought into sharper focus, and this is what the cancer diagnosis did for Mom as well. This wake-up call on the fragility of life made her realize they really did need to get serious about moving before it was too late. At the time, there were hardly any houses for sale, but on a whim, she started browsing the sites of builders, and one floor plan from a well-respected builder caught her eye. Everything was on one level, with the option of adding a walk-out basement, and it had a bumped-out dining area with three windows so you could feel as though you were eating outside all year round. And the neighborhood the builder was looking to develop—about a half hour drive from our old house—had sidewalks and accessible trails. So after the Good Friday service that year, we arranged to visit a model home, and a month later, my parents had signed a contract with the builder. We would be moving in the summer of 2025.
My parents were hoping the new house would be ready for us in June or July, especially when we learned that my sister was expecting my nephew to be born in late August or early September, and wanted us to come and care for my niece while she and my brother-in-law were at the hospital. But as luck would have it, what with city permitting headaches and construction delays, the house wasn’t ready until late August. My parents were terrified that they would not have time to empty out and close on the old house, and get everything we own moved to the new house before my sister needed us. My parents officially signed the legal paperwork to move into our new house August 20, and we had until August 29 at 10:30am to move out of the old house. Nine days seemed like plenty of time to me. I don’t think any of us fully comprehended how much stuff we, a typical suburban American family had accumulated until August 28, when despite renting and filling a pod, renting a u-hall for the weekend, and filling up our Subaru once or twice a day, my parents arrived at the old house at 7:00 in the morning, and Dad frantically drove back and forth as if in a relay race, unloading boxes and barely saying a word before turning around and driving back for another load. We lost track of how many trips he made, but we are guessing around ten. Meanwhile, Mom frantically cleaned, wanting to give the new family a clean house. August 26 was the day when it really sunk in that we were actually moving, as this was the day the professional movers came and loaded all of our furniture onto trucks and brought it to the new house. Once the furniture was gone, it started feeling less like home, and I even found it disorienting as I never appreciated the extent to which furniture oriented me in each room. I spent most of August 28 at the new house which was more comfortable now, but Dad brought me back to the old house around 7:30 that evening. I figured I would have maybe an hour or two to say goodbye to my childhood home, stand in my bedroom where I spent many peaceful hours studying or writing, sit on the big wooden swing on our patio one more time and enjoy the sweet soothing sound of its creaking, remembering all the summer days since middle school when I would bring a braille book out to it and read for hours, or sometimes just meditate and listen to the birds sing. There wouldn’t be room for it on our new patio. But we wouldn’t end up being ready to leave the old house until 12:30 that morning. As a capstone to the craziness, when the house was finally empty and clean, Mom and I wanted to walk through each room, say a little prayer, briefly share the memories of that room and bless the new family that would move in. But when we got to the kitchen, Mom noticed something red all over the tile floor she had mopped so meticulously. We figured out that I had cut my foot, and it was my blood on the floor. I remember stepping on a sharp rock that was on the carpet while saying goodbye to my bedroom, but I didn’t realize it had cut me. Dad helped Mom spot clean my blood off the floor, and when we got back to the new house, Mom doctored my foot. Despite my parents being exhausted, and having eaten nothing other than a quick McDonald’s breakfast on the way to the house that morning, Dad had a feeling that they better unload the pod. The company was scheduled to pick it up between 8:00 and 11:00 that morning, and he worried they would not wake up in time to empty it if they went to bed. Finally, around 3:30, my parents collapsed into bed. And then at around 4:00, my sister texted that she was going into labor. Could Mom make the 6am flight?
She was not able to make the 6am flight, but she found her box of clothes, quickly packed, while telling Dad to go back to bed for an hour so he could try to get at least a little sleep before driving to the airport, and boarded the 9am flight to the east coast. On the way to the airport, my parents got the call that our nephew/grandson had been born.
Everything happened so fast and so chaotically that I think I experienced a kind of emotional overload. Mom stayed on the east coast for just over two weeks to help my sister, returning Sunday evening September 14. Since then, this new address is feeling more and more like home every day as Mom unpacks all the boxes and finds logical places for everything. But while she was gone, I mentioned to Dad that it almost felt as if we were on vacation, living in some strange rented house, but we would board a plane and fly home any day.
Mom is the clear leader of our nuclear family. We joked one day over dinner in our old house that if we were a football team, Mom would be the star quarterback, Dad would be the running-back, and I would be the cheerleader. Giant tasks like packing and unpacking boxes to move overwhelm me and Dad. In fact, Dad and I were mostly AWOL while Mom packed the boxes at our old house, and I wore dirty clothes the first few days Mom was gone. That first weekend, Dad plopped a box Mom had labeled as containing my clothes into my room, but the clothes on top were clothes I didn’t recognize, and the thought of sorting through such a giant box made me cry. But it occurred to Mom a few days in that she could hold my hand virtually over FaceTime, and so together, we unpacked the box. The clothes I didn’t recognize were clothes I rarely/never wore, extra clothes that Grandma had given me over the years. They were nice clothes, but not practical for every day. She suggested putting these on the top shelf of my closet, and sure enough, we did eventually get to my everyday clothes. But it really did feel like we were camping out in someone else’s house in the sense that Dad wasn’t sure where to put things, so opted to just keep the silverware in the box Mom packed it in, on the kitchen island. We would use it, run it through the dishwasher, then put it back in the box. We also made do with just a few dishes which Mom kept separate when packing the old house. I suspended my routine of making my weekly batch of soup in the crockpot, opting for Amy’s canned soup because there was just not enough counterspace what with all the boxes we were temporarily storing there, and some of the dishes I needed were still in these boxes. Dad and I would cook eggs and oatmeal in the morning, but we went out for dinner a lot.
But although I found myself unexpectedly crying for Mom’s leadership through this chaotic transition, I haven’t once cried out of homesickness for the old house as I thought I would when anticipating this move. Maybe it is because we really didn’t move that far. We will still be able to go to the same church, see the same doctors, and I am actually closer to our choir rehearsal site. Maybe it is because although our yard is much smaller and the neighbors much closer, it is a peaceful setting with plenty of nature to enjoy. One thing I loved about our yard back in what I now refer to light-heartedly as “the old country” is that because we didn’t use chemicals on our lawn, our yard attracted sandhill cranes which I think have the coolest, most majestic call, as if they are transplants from the jungle. I wondered if in our new more urban setting I would ever hear sandhill cranes again. As if God were comforting me, I heard a sandhill crane the very first morning as I was waking up in the new house and I have heard them on several other occasions since. Maybe I haven’t been homesick because the open concept floor plan that I thought would be an orientation nightmare has proved not to be so bad. By trailing the walls and kitchen counters, I have mastered the main level. I still get disoriented in the basement, but that I know I will figure out with time. But I think the real reason I haven’t been homesick is that God has brought a Bible verse to mind that has stuck with me and comforted me. “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven,” (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
Our old house was an idyllic place to grow up, with a two acre yard, and a long driveway so we could play far from the street. Sidewalks and access to public transportation for independent travel weren’t things my parents thought about since I was a toddler when we moved in. But until recently I didn’t mind, and I honestly felt lucky, as I felt like my blind peers who lived in urban environments didn’t have the appreciation of nature and serenity that I got to enjoy. But now we are in a new season of life. I still appreciate nature and serenity, but I have also felt stir-crazy in recent years, longing for a little more independence. And now that my siblings and I are all grown up, the yard had become nothing but a chore. But we were able to find out that the house had been sold to a family with children around the same ages my siblings and I were when we moved in, and this warmed our hearts. It is a house built for children, and as I write this, I find myself smiling knowing that children are getting settled, hopefully for many years making their own happy memories there.
Years ago, when the prospect of moving was still discussed in hypothetical terms, I heard Miranda Lambert’s song The House that Built Me, and it struck a chord with me. In the song, the narrator feels lost and broken, and so she goes back to her childhood home, and asks the new owners if she can walk through, promising she “won’t take nothing but a memory, from the house that built me.” At the time, I wondered if I too would feel lost and broken when my childhood home was sold. Now that we have actually moved, I can confidently say I do not feel lost and broken. I am realizing more and more every day that this house is what we need for this season of life. To highlight this, the guide dog trainer came to visit last week, and he followed me as I independently walked a route with trails and sidewalks, and I am now on the waiting list for a guide dog. Dad also made a great point when he said this will truly be our house. My childhood home was bought from a previous owner, and although it was well cared for and made a great home, we were always constrained to an extent by the decisions made by the people who built the house. For example, we could have updated the kitchen, but that would have been so expensive, not to mention inconvenient, that we decided it made more sense to wait until we could build from the ground up. It makes me happy to see my parents enjoying the kitchen layout, lighting and décor that they chose.
I am not going to lie. If I was offered the opportunity to walk through my childhood home again, I would take it, but only out of curiosity, to see whether the new owners updated it, if it is anything like I remembered it. But if I never get this opportunity, that is alright. But although I don’t feel lost and broken as the narrator of Miranda Lambert’s song did, I do believe the narrator got one thing right. A house is more than a cold, transactional piece of real estate to be bought and sold and flipped. Houses are like cake molds, that shape us, shape our memories. So while I recognize that it was time to move and embrace a new season of life, I don’t begrudge those who are sentimental about their homes, the elderly people that cannot leave, even if maintaining the house is getting difficult. Of course, home is about the people you love, not the brick and mortar place. And of course, as Christians we recognize that any earthly home is only temporary, so sentimentality should be kept in proper perspective. That being said, there will always be a special place in my heart for the house we didn’t build, but which built me.
Gilbert and Me 