I WAS TOUCHED to misty-eyes by a recent post over at the food blog Tea & Cookies. Tea’s mom is moving away from her family’s beloved Bay Area home, and so Tea took some time to blog about her final goodbye to the house. She bid farewell to the jasmine that her mother planted outside of her childhood bedroom window, stole some longing gazes at the kitchen stove, and picked the last figs from their fig tree. But sweetest of all, she wrote the future inhabitant of her bedroom, a little girl, a lovely note (pictured above), and hid it in the bedroom closet for the girl to find when she’s old enough to read. Isn’t that wonderful? What a lucky girl to have some secret history hidden away in her room.
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You’re so sweet to mention it, but I must admit the idea was planted by two friends of mine. One of them found a note in her closet, placed where only a child would look, and I was charmed by the concept. I would have been fascinated, when I was young, had I found something similar (heck, I’d be fascinated now).
Thanks for the mention!
It’s so sad to move away from your childhood home!
According to some dream analysis, the psyche is compared to a house and to me visa-versa. When we sold my parents house in September 2005, where they had lived for 44 years and after which, they had both died there within the past year, it was the final chapter in Charles’ and Edna’s physical and psychological existences. The heart ache and ensuing emotional flood rearranged my psyche’s new spaces with refurbished memories. I keep rearranging to allow more light filled places.
Being a “house person,” this story rips my heart out. No, my guts. Even worse. When I left my first married home, I cried for 3 years.
I love this idea of leaving a time-capsule note behind… it underscores how we never really “own” anything forever. We are just caretakers, making a place better, we hope, for the next inhabitants.
The house I live in has initials carved into two of the downstairs doorways, and even that small leave-behind fascinates me and makes me feel connected. Sweet.
My grandmother lived in her house for 60 years until she died in her 90s. We cleaned out the house, each taking with us items that we loved so we could remember all the fun and love we enjoyed there. The house was sold and we said our good byes. Soon after the sale, the new owner called to ask if we wanted the ancient pull-down wooden ironing board in the kitchen closet. Penciled on the back of the board were my father’s familiy’s heights on each of their birthdays. We had forgotten that time capsule.
I dread to the depths of my soul, the day I will have to sell my childhood home.