Will You Miss This House?

“If we ever move, would you miss this house?” A random question asked to me by my son.

My immediate response was weak, “Probably?”.

Afterward I pondered the question longer, allowing my thoughts to bring me to previous homes and whether I missed them.

I’ve lived in ten different places before the one we currently live in. Each can be tied to special memories like living with my parents and brothers, playing with neighborhood friends, buying my first house, becoming a parent, and countless more.

When my girls were little, we moved from one house to another in the same town.  By all accounts it was an exciting move. We were on a quieter street in the same school district with more kids in the neighborhood, and the new house had a pool and a dishwasher! Yet my oldest daughter was distraught. That became evident when we were conducting the initial cleaning in the new house’s kitchen and discovered a fake chicken foot installed by the previous owners as a dish towel hook inside one of the cabinets. Different and we’d surely be removing it, but tears built up in my daughter’s eyes as she quickly became inconsolable, shouting things like “This house is weird, I never wanted to leave the old house! Take me back there now!” We talked through it, and she eventually calmed down.  

That story stuck with me because it baffled me, first because you don’t see a towel hook looking like a chicken foot every day, but also, I knew the reaction my daughter had was not really about the towel hook. We weren’t settled, we were out of sorts, and this was the first time my 9-year-old daughter moved, so it may have been hard for her to understand that what really mattered was that we were all together with all our things, our cats and our people.

Fast forward back to today and the question at hand. “Would I miss this house if we moved from it?”

I love that we make use of every room. I love the quiet yet kid friendly neighborhood. I love the convenience of our driveway having room for multiple cars to park without having to ask someone else to move theirs. And I love that I can sit and watch the birds in the backyard. So yes, I love this house.

But the question was not ‘do I love this house’, the question was ‘would I miss this house’, and that’s different.

I’ll miss the moments spent in this house. Like when the kids were growing up, making funny videos, coming home with their stories of the day, and their silly arguments. But I already miss those moments.

I’ll miss the people that lived with us or visited with us in this house. The kids when they were kids, their childhood friends, my mother, my brother, and all the times shared with many loved ones and friends. But I’ll miss the old times whether we are still in this house or not.

I won’t miss this house, or anything related to the four walls, because the things I will miss will stay with me, just like everything else that I’ve loved. I get to keep the times and memories as they will always exist in my heart and mind. So, the answer to ‘will I miss this house’ is no.