Last fall, I found out that my parents were moving, and the home that I used to know wouldn't be home for too much longer. I found out that Christmas 2016 would be our last Christmas in our house. I vaguely remember our first. It shouldn't have thrown me for as much of a loop as it did. Considering that I've relocated to Virginia, I'm a grad student with a full time nursing job, and I don't get to go home much, I've essentially "moved out". During nursing school, I was able to be home in North Carolina for 4-5 months out of the year. My NC address was still the one that I wrote down as my home address. Virginia was temporary...or so I thought. But once I packed up and moved most of my stuff up here in August, Virginia became my new place of residence. My nursing license was transferred, I updated my voter registration, and changed my address for bills and such. But my NC address was still listed as my backup for school.

The last time my family moved was on my brother's second birthday. Some kids get new cars when they turn 16, my little brother got a new house when he turned two. It was just a coincidence...or so I've been told. I was five at the time, and still remember taking a nap on the carpeted floor of our old house with my grandma and brother. If we'd made it to April of this year, our house would have been officially ours for 18 years. A lot has changed since my brother's second birthday. The blue Mercury Villager and green Ford Taurus my parents had then are long gone. They've since been replaced in our garage by a white Toyota Sienna and a silver Honda CR-V (all the cars in between have been omitted due to lengthy tales of tragedy and sorrow). Two other cars, belonging to my brother and I, have joined the mix, but are rarely at the house due to both of us being in school. Our house has been home to a multitude of pets, ranging from a frog captured in the wild, to four gerbils, four dogs, two dwarf hamsters, one rabbit, and one cat (not all at one time). Our house has seen fights, it's seen tears, it's seen laughter. It's been the site of two high school and one college graduation parties, 18 family Christmases, some Thanksgivings (when we aren't out of town), and a multitude of birthdays.

Our house truly was in the perfect location for my brother and I as we were growing up. We were within walking distance of the elementary, middle, and high school that we attended, which turned out to be a major blessing. Since our neighborhood had a "secret" sidewalk that led from a cul-de-sac close to ours to the back of our elementary school, morning and afternoon drop-offs were much easier than they were for the parents who waited in the long carpool line at the front of the school. Once we got to middle school, a group of us walked together, through that very same short-cut, up to the middle school. I didn't get my license until November of my junior year of high school, but it didn't matter much because I could walk out my front door and be there in five minutes (or faster if I ran some).

Now, our house isn't really ours anymore. It belongs to another family...or at least, it will officially in two weeks. And I know it's probably silly to be getting sentimental over a building, but to me, it's not just another house on the street. That house is...or I guess was...my home. It was the place that I knew was always going to be there when I left school in the afternoons. When I was in nursing school and came back to NC during breaks, I knew I would have a familiar place to go. I knew I could go upstairs and lay on my bed, in my room, with my closet and dresser and desk...just like I had since I was 5. If I wanted to hang up my ENO, our front yard had the perfect trees to hang it between. Houses don't really become homes until you make them your own, and make memories in them. But now it's time to start over. The majority of our stuff has now been moved over to our new house, and I've visited the old one for the last time. Is it sad to leave behind my beloved childhood home? Oh yeah. But the memories made there didn't stay behind when we left. They're carried with us, and new memories will be made here. And after all, coming home to family is more important than the house they're in.