Woke up this morning feeling thick-headed and slow, not a huge departure from what’s become normal, but not within familiar operating range. My eyes and brain worked well together, neither focusing worth a damn, and my speech reminded me of Elmer Fudd. B’dee b’dah b’dee b’doe. The coffee was good and the morning paper was late, so that part was as it should have been, but something was off, out of sync, perplexing.
What’s happening? What’s different today? Why do I feel like left-over bread pudding? I looked around the house and didn’t see anything that didn’t belong there and didn’t detect anything missing. The weather wasn’t the problem because it never is. I stopped grumbling about it years ago, when I finally learned there was nothing I could do about it anyway. Still, something was wrong, in a very mild sort of way, and my chubby little fingers couldn’t find it.
I went to the computer to check different things, and I found something that caused my discomfort to increase in spasms of dim recognition. I found my house, cute little red shutters and all, pictured in the real estate for sale section, and then I knew. I was experiencing post-partum depression, sort of, and it was not welcome. It was, however, undeniable. We were planning to move and I was sad about it.
When I asked Sue how she felt, she told me she felt sad, too. This had been her home before it had become mine, although I’d spent many hours here before we married, fixing stuff, building stuff. Now we were serious about moving away, and we had the blues, both of us. We talked about it a little bit, drawing some comfort in sharing this sadness, and we decided that what we were feeling was not uncommon.
We had put significant amounts of work into the house and we’d left a mark here. Wherever we looked, we could see our personalities, playful and creative, and we agreed that the house had gained something it had not before possessed. It has soul, now. To anyone else in the world, it’s an old house. To us, it’s a friend and a place we honestly had grown to cherish. There’s an adage that says home is where you hang your hat, and I’m not going to argue with that. But today, this first morning on the for sale market, home was where we hung our heads.
We know there’s nothing wrong with feeling a tad melancholy about leaving. If we felt nothing, then there’d be something to think about, so we were within the realm of the acceptable. If we could do it, I think we’d pack up this friendly old house and take it with us to a new spot, the place we’ve found that’s closer to the lakes, further from the noise. But we can’t and we know it, so we’ll go through this brief and minor episode of quasi-grief, and then start recovering.
All in all, it’s a good sign that we feel something, even if it is uncomfortable and unwanted right now. When we sell and move on, the new place will captivate us, too, and we’ll experience the fondness that everyone feels about their home, humble or huge. It might be better if this takes a little while, this selling and moving, because if it strings out over a few weeks or months, it won’t seem like we’re abandoning our home. And that’s what it feels like right now, that’s the thick-headed feeling I’ve had since early today. I want it to stop.