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Illustration by Alex Deadman-Wylie
Our house was known as the gathering place.
When the kids were growing up, my husband and I welcomed the opportunity to host. I tended to go overboard when planning special occasions, often enlisting family and friends, who were happy to help things get out of hand. My daughter created the slideshows, my sommelier cousin invented signature drinks, and my crafty cousin once built a wishing well as an engagement party prop. One of our parties had food stations in almost every room and hallway and we greeted our guests with a map so they could plan their culinary journey through the house.
Then our children moved away, met their spouses and settled in cities a nine-hour drive away from our Northern Ontario hometown.
After our children settled in Southern Ontario, we celebrated their weddings (near their new hometowns), helped them move into their first homes and raced down for the birth of our first grandchild.
It became clear, with every return to my clean, quiet, empty house, that this was no longer where my heart was. I was forced to question what made our house a home. What had taken 25 years to build had lost its warmth, become a questionable anchor, and was making a general nuisance of itself.
My stuff was here, in this cavern of accumulation, but my heart and I were planning our next trip. It was time to consider something I thought I’d never do – leave my house and my hometown.
As I struggled with the decision, I found that, in order to entertain the thought of leaving the house, I had to reduce it to just that. A house. I had to embrace black and white thinking instead of the wash of grey that was comfortable but not helpful. My husband had no such struggle with this decision, but he waited patiently until I came around.
My moment of clarity came when I asked myself if I missed my children and granddaughter more than I would miss my life in my hometown. This was pretty black and white.
Once we put our house up for sale, I resented every dollar then spent on maintenance, every flower I had to plant in the name of curb appeal and every “some day I might need this” box I had stashed in the basement. I felt like a traitor, but by diminishing the house’s significance and shedding my need to attach deep meaning to my late mother-in-law’s punch bowl, I started to decouple myself from the house and its contents.
People asked, “Oh, isn’t it hard for you to leave? You have close family here.” I felt the need to lie, for fear of being labelled as a cold-hearted something, but my honest answer would have been: “No, not really.” And I came to terms with the answer I eventually started giving: “I believe we can’t have everything in life, so I have to choose who I would miss most.” This answer broached no argument.
Some people insisted, “You should never move to be closer to your children.” Their assumption was that we’d inject ourselves into our children’s lives and face disappointment when we weren’t welcome. I had an answer for that one, too. I quoted my daughter-in-law, who had been suggesting for years, and not subtly, that we move closer. “I know it’ll be hard to leave behind the traditions you’ve built, but maybe we can start new traditions together.”
My brother had the best response to our news. “While I don’t want you to move away, if I was in your shoes, and my children lived far away, I’d make the same decision.”
Unlike the emotional journey that led to the decision to move, the road to the exit was mercifully checklist-driven. The boxes, packing labels and spreadsheets were means to an end that couldn’t come fast enough. Knowing we planned to move somewhere with less space intensified my already ruthless purging and justified the decision to leave behind the big, heavy, dated furniture of our 40-year marriage. We relished a fresh start that included décor of the current century.
It’s been four years since we made the biggest move of our lives, and we continue to host gatherings and connect nearby friends and family with our children and their families (a second grandchild now added to the mix). In the spring, I still make many loaves of Easter bread, alert the family when it’s due to come out of the oven and watch with unbridled joy as my grandchildren proudly locate the hidden egg in the warm, sweet, twisted braids. I teach old recipes to our children and grandchildren and we create new traditions along the way, such as wacky Wednesday, silly Sunday, or any such alliterative day when our grandchildren visit. The laughter of little ones, sticky fingerprints, and crumb trails of suspicious origin have once again made our house into a home.
Norma Gardner lives in Waterdown, Ont.