Homesick

Homesick
Cause I know longer know
Where home is...

We came one step closer to selling the family house this week when my sister created a Facebook event to invite everyone we know to help us officially EMPTY the house on July 9. My sibs and our spouses and I will be at the house for the next two weekends to get as much as we can into the rented dumpsters and sorted into donation boxes before others come (hopefully) to help with the last of the hauling.

It has to be done. I know.

It made my heart hurt. Especially because she used a beautiful shot of the house all decked out for our wedding last summer in the event invite.

Some days I can't bear the thought of not having that home to go home to. Even though mom and dad aren't there anymore. Especially because mom and dad are not there anymore.

The cleaning out hasn't been as brutal as I thought it would be. We had already removed pretty much anything of sentimental value last year, and now we're really down to boxes of plastic Easter eggs, romance novels, and VHS tapes. That helps. But the fact remains that when it is empty, we will be trying to sell it to some other family. Some other family who is not our family. The house that my parents built together, with a  fire place made out of stones from my grandpa's corn field. With beams from my other grandpa's barn. There's an electrical outlet near the peak of the vaulted ceiling in the living room. Why? Because Dad dreamed of a Christmas tree that went all the way to the top. And we would need some place high to plug in the Christmas tree lights.

Who would appreciate that? Or the eager glee my dad must have taken designing his own house at 25.

We went to Hubs's parents' house for Father's Day. I wasn't feeling particularly depressed, but I sat indoors in the AC and read old Marie Claire and Town and Country magazines for much of the afternoon while he and his fam sat on the porch in the steamy overcast sunlight and chatted and laughed. I talked to his grandmother a bit at the kitchen table. I miss grandmothers, too. But I was missing my dad that day. I felt sad watching Hubs and his Dad have a heart to heart about the decision not to go back to teach next year. Jealous. I sat like a lazy lump on the couch while father and son talked Life Plan and his mom and sister did dishes. I offered to help with the dishes, but they declined and I could hear the buzz of their chat from the living room.

I'm becoming more comfortable there, but it is not my home.

So the cycle of "house wanting" starts again. Of a place where we can stay, rooted, for more than a lease or two. I'd add to that even the idea of "our family". The quiet new longing to be a mom, even though I don't have one. Especially because I don't have one? Maybe. It's a homesick feeling.