Adventures in a Mistaken Way

This past week I felt a presence that I haven't felt in a long time, but I am getting very Darth Vadar-Obi-Wan-During-Episode-4- on you, and that is not fair.

It was either trailing behind, strolling beside or lounging next to me for the better part of my week vacation back home. Some incarnation of myself was with me, in my parents new home, it was the future me, the daughter with her old parents, worrying about the access and amenities that Houghton Lake, MI has to offer. Driving to Traverse City to visit my friend from Grad School, I was 20 years old during my first year of grad school, feeling very out of place and in over my head. Sitting on the boat with my family was teenage me, having my first beer with my brother and fishing while lounging in the sun. In my parents old house, it was young me, probably 10 years old, torn between trying to suck-it-up-and-deal-with-it-like-a-big-girl and wanted to make the memories of my childhood sink in.
 

I felt my old self the most when I was driving back from my best high school friend’s house, while smelling of camp fire and having reminisced for several hours. It was the last time I would drive home on a summer night with the windows down, playing music while having just left my friends. It felt so much like the summer after high school when the group of us was inseparable. But the entire time it was as if she was sitting in the passenger’s seat. Reminding me of what it felt like. When all you have is the future, all the great adventures and fuck ups. So many of those friends are married and starting families, and I am (happily) so far from that. But with young me in sitting there, I am reminded of when we all where together, friends, happy, and waiting for our lives to start.

My parents had an offer of their house only 4 days after they listed and are now working on the deal.

It just surprised me, how hard this was going to be. Considering that I haven't lived there in 6 years. But now this house will get a whole new life. Another family will live in it. Kids will run up and down the back yard, they will think it was a really great idea that one time to ride laundry baskets down the basement stairs, or try to drown each other in the kiddie pool, or drag their sleds in the winter down to the culdesac. They will sneak out of the house late at night, they will hide liquor in the closest and water down the bottles next to the china cabinet. It will serve that family well, the same way it saw 34 years with mine. My brother and I both grew up and left that house. Now it just has my parents and 3 floors of stuff in it. So thank you little house, with your squeaky floors, doors that stick or wont shut, pealing wall paper, scratches from kids playing in it, stone steps in the garden, flowers in the shade, trees to read under, grass to play it.

That will do, little house, that will do.