Buds in winter

My parents moved away on Friday.

Of course, they moved away in many ways over the years, but this time, it feels very final. They sold their house north of Milwaukee, the house where I grew up. They hadn't been physically living in it full-time for the last year or so, but it was there. They would come back from the Las Vegas home they had bought, and they would stay there, or could, while they were in the midwest. We went there with our children as often as we could before they put it on the market to sell, and several times in the past two months as they readied it for the closing.

I am not very sad about them selling that house, unfortunately -- I've spoken about it at length with my brother, and both of us feel more nostalgic for the concept of "home" or "my childhood home" than we are for the actual place. So much anxiety is associated with it for both of us -- difficult relationships with our parents that became more complex as we got older -- that we are just as happy to never go back. The people who bought it are planning to tear it down and build something else, and I would like to see that happen. I would like to stand on the street and watch it fall.

Goodbye, bedroom my parents built for me when I was fifteen, when all I asked was that it be dark enough for me to sleep in the mornings. They built it with a picture window and skylight, and True and I nicknamed it "the room on the surface of the sun" when we would come to visit. My mom asked me, when it was done, "what kind of curtains would you like?" and I said "anything but pink." Goodbye, curtains with the pink flowers.

Goodbye, back porch with the light I forgot to shut off when I came home after my parents were asleep. Goodbye to that sound on the stairs at three a.m., when my father would come up, bark, "Deborah, you didn't turn out the light. Again! Go down and turn it off!"

Goodbye, closet in my parents' bedroom, where I found my mother shaking and crying after an argument with my father. Goodbye to the sound of her crying, "I should never have been born. Just go away and leave me here, forever."

Goodbye, dining room, where, for two whole weeks when I was in high school, my father refused to speak to me. I don't remember why. I had done something wrong, been something wrong. Dinner for two weeks, silence from my father, knot in my stomach, mother pretending it wasn't happening, little brother confused -- goodbye, furious silence.

Goodbye, living room with two couches facing each other, where my father accused me of hiding money in our joint college account, the one for which he got the statements. Goodbye, brick wall I stared at as he called me a thief.

Of course, I have far more positive memories of my childhood home than these negative ones, but as I've become a more conscious parent, I've become more angry about these. There will be memories of angry or disappointing times in our home for Doodlebug and Shmoo, too, but I hope, like all parents do, that the beautiful ones will hold more power for them. I hope our adult relationship will make them more generous in their memories than I am.

For now, I am ready to let new buds form in my relationship with my parents, now that the site of so much pain for me will be destroyed. It may be winter, but I'm ready to prepare the ground for a new garden. What we all plant remains to be seen.