My memory has just been sold.

Sometimes I think I'm just a wee bit psychic. For a scientist, I'm remarkably willing to believe in such very unscientific things - I think it comes from having more creativity than knowledge at my disposal at any given time. So... remember that sudden, unexplained bout of homesickness about a week ago? I thought it was weird, because it's not like I just left home...I spent 7 years living in Indiana, only able to go home once (or twice, if I was lucky) a year. In that time, I would occasionally get homesick, but always when it had been 6 months or more since I'd been home, and I was just there over Christmas. Besides, I really like Toronto - I wasn't here for long at all before it started feeling comfortably homey. So wherefore the sudden feeling of longing for my homeland?

Well, I found out on Wednesday that my parents now have an offer on the house I grew up in. The price is good, the contract is uncomplicated, and they're expecting closing to go pretty quickly. And just like that, the door closes on a 25-year chapter of our family history. I was 4 years old when we moved into that house - I don't have any memories of any other house we've lived in. I learned to ride a bike on that street...practiced high-kick routines on the deck in the backyard...on snow days, I rode my little plastic sled down the little hill over and over again until I had a good, icy track made before I made a nest in the family room out of my inflatable snow tube and my comforter, tucked in with a mug of cocoa. Having a big yard with woods behind it meant we all had to help rake the leaves in fall - Mom and Dad would rake up a big pile for my brother and I to jump in, but first they'd try to find a spot of ground without too many tree roots. My brother, always the bolder and less inhibited of the two of us, always seemed to find (usually with his tailbone) exposed roots at the bottom of the pile that I never hit. My job was always to stand in the trash can and stomp down the leaves to compact them, then take them back and dump them on the compost pile when the can was full. When I re-read that, it doesn't sound like much of a memory, but I always liked raking leaves, and I'm really going to miss that yard. There were a lot of good dinners on that deck over the years, and the (now) huge trees always provide lots of squirrel and bird antics to watch. My bedroom faced due east, and I always liked the way the morning sun streamed through my window, filtered through the leaves of the maple tree in the front yard. It would wake me up early on Saturday or Sunday mornings, and I'd curl up in bed with a book, or head downstairs to watch cartoons. In the summer, Dad would usually be outside working in the garden before the full heat of the day set in, and he'd come in, sit on the couch, and start watching Looney Tunes with me. And we would usually have the following conversation:

Dad: Whatcha think, (cute nickname that only Dad is allowed to call me withheld)?
Me: About what?
Dad: Anything.
Me: I don't know...

I remember one time going upstairs to the kitchen for something while Looney Tunes were on, and finding Dad up there cleaning some of the veggies he had brought in from the garden, watching the same cartoons I was. I was SCANDALIZED. It was probably the first time it dawned with me that my daddy was silly.

But Christmas Eve was always the best day of the year in that house, and the one I will miss the most. Since my grandparents and assorted extended family all lived in Illinois, our family holidays were always just about the four of us. My brother and I would have the day off from school, so I'd help Mom with whatever decorating/baking/etc. might still need to be done around the house. Dad would come home from work early and usually rope me into helping him wrap Mom's presents. When it was time for dinner, I'd set the table downstairs in the family room so we could have dinner by the Christmas tree with a fire going in the fireplace. A number of years, dinner was cheese fondue - we did this one year, and the following year my brother and I conveniently re-wrote history and declared it Tradition, which somehow actually worked on my parents. It was the only night of the year we would eat fondue, and usually the only night of the year we used that fireplace. Dad would usually grumble and curse profusely trying to get it going (think The Old Man working on the furnace in A Christmas Story and you've got the idea), but it always had to be done and was always appreciated. After the egg nog and Christmas cookies for dessert, my brother and I would explore the pile of presents under the tree, figuring out how many we had and wondering what they were. He'd lie on his back, looking up through the branches and the colored lights, and I'd follow suit because I learned pretty early on that he has pretty cool ideas and I was a very unoriginal child. Eventually, we'd go to bed, and while the fireplace had made the family room nice and toasty, it would have sucked all of the heat out of the rest of the house, so I'd have to snuggle up in my comforter and wait for the bed to warm up before I could even think about getting to sleep. Meanwhile, Mom and Dad would start putting out the stockings and things - they kept all of the goodies in their room, which was right across the hall from mine, so I always knew what they were up to. My parents are not terribly subtle people. Two Christmases ago, we had our last Christmas Eve in that house. Mom and Dad had bought their retirement house in the Shenandoah Valley a few years ago, and had been starting to have holidays out there, but they had plans to retire last year and figured it would be the last chance to have dinner next to the fireplace. They gave my brother and I the choice of where to spend Christmas, and he voted for the old house. Most depressing Christmas ever - I spent the whole time thinking about how it was going to be the last one and getting really sad. So this year, before they put the house on the market, Mom said, "well, maybe the house won't be sold yet...we might do Christmas here again..." To which I replied, "No! I already HAD my Last Christmas, and you are NOT allowed to put me through that again."

I think that's why I'm so sad about this whole thing - it's been a long, drawn-out farewell. Since they bought the house in the Valley about 5 years ago, Mom and Dad have been slowly phasing into it and out of the old house - repainting rooms one at a time, fixing things that need to be fixed before the house goes on the market, removing things that personalize the house and moving them to the new one, leaving both houses without much of an identity. During that Last Christmas, they had moved the bookshelves that had lined one wall of that family room for 25 years out to the new house. That one change made it no longer feel like our family room, which is part of why that was such a depressing Christmas. When I moved back home briefly last May, I was stunned to see grass planted in my dad's garden - and this isn't some little patch of tomatoes in a corner of the yard...we're talking a significant presence in our backyard that has been devoted to tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, squash, lima beans, etc. for as long as I can remember. By the time I went home for this past Christmas, they were living full-time out in the Valley to avoid cluttering up the house they were trying to sell, and as Dad put it, "it's like living in someone else's house with all of our furniture" whenever they would come back up to Dale City. So it's really a good thing that it's been put out of its misery - apparently, should the deal go through smoothly, there will be two families moving into the house, and there are at least a couple of little girls. They were particularly drawn to the lot, which means my yard will be put to good use, which I am happy about. And it'll be nice for my parents to finally be able to REALLY settle into the new house, furniture, wall hangings, and all. It truly is perfect for them, and after a lifetime of working hard and making sacrifices to raise us, it's just a drop in the bucket as far as what they deserve. But pardon me while I have a moment of silence for my old house. It was a good house, and I'm going to miss it, orange shag carpeting and all.