For sale

Our house went on the market yesterday. We bought it thinking we’d be here for two or three years, tops. It’s been eight years and three months. The time is right for us to move. We need more space. A two-bedroom townhome with a tiny yard is getting too small for two highly energetic boys. And don’t even get me started on how complicated it is to have out-of-town visitors. This was our starter home. The next place—it will be THE house (fingers crossed), the one will be in until the boys graduate and maybe even longer.

I stopped by a coffee shop yesterday for a late lunch. There were three young men there, having lunch together, telling stories, laughing. They were probably high school seniors, I thought, taking advantage of open campus or early dismissal the last few weeks of school. I remember so clearly being in their shoes. It hasn’t been very long. I am not that much older than them… And then it hit me. I AM. I AM much older than them. They are closer in age to my kids than to me. Twelve years from now, it will be Child grabbing lunch at a coffee shop with his friends and preparing for graduation.

And suddenly, I felt old. I didn’t want to put our house on the market. I didn’t want to leave our tiny townhome. My babies are still babies while we are in this house. In the next house, they will be teenagers and graduates and college students and out of the house. And I don’t want that. I want them to be babies—my babies, who love me unconditionally and forgive me for not always doing my best as their mama. I don’t want to move.