Tomorrow we will be getting ready for bed in our new house, and I am so excited for this new place in life that we have both worked so hard to create. On the other hand, I feel a since a loss for the home we have built in the past 7 years. It may not be much, but it was ours, and there are a lot of memories. I moved to this home when I was 12, just after I broke my right elbow the second time during the last week of 6th grade. My grandparents live just up the road, and another extended family grew from the neighbors I have had over the past 17 years. Many of them are surrogate aunts and uncles, and my cousins are too many to count. Even when I moved away during my college years, I knew I had a home on Elm street.
Currently there are still things about this neighborhood that can drive me batty. Our neighbor’s dogs are always barking, people fly down the street in vehicles like it’s a raceway, and walking the streets at night can raise your levels of anxiety to new heights due to the lack of streetlights and sidewalks. That being said, I see the potential for things to get better, and they are even now. Sidewalks are getting installed so walking around is less scary, neighbors are helping each other by letting them borrow a mower, inviting each other over for conversation and a meal, and in general a community is being built.
I am only moving 3 miles away, and I am happy that I am staying near the place I grew up. Not only so I can visit with my neighbor-family easily, but because I am not quite ready to give up that part of me just yet. I am still going to be a Westsider, albeit an ultra-Westsider, and I have no shame in telling others where I grew up anymore. It’s the place where the trees turn the most beautiful browns and reds in the autumn and the brightest array of colors in the spring. It’s the place where you can find other’s helping each other without expectation of anything in return. It’s the place where you can observe someone playing a guitar into cement rainwater drainage system (presumably because the acoustics are better and it actually happened yesterday). It’s the place where I learned to not sweat the small stuff and to always be grateful for what you have. I will miss it, though I am sure this new home is a much better fit for what we need and want in a home now.
So goodbye Elm street, and stay awesome.