You really can't go home again

My parents have sold their house. They closed yesterday. *insert big, sad sigh here.*

This is the house I grew up in. The house I snuck out of when I was 15, and subsequently got caught sneaking out of (but only once or twice). The house where I made love to my husband for the first time. The house I saw morph into an elegant work of art. The house I always thought I'd be able to go back to.

I can't bring myself to take the keys off my key ring.

Their new condo won't be home. It just won't. It will just be this place where they live. Yeah, all their furniture is there, but it's not home. Going home won't mean the same thing anymore. I'll always identify that house as home. I imagine in five years I'll drive by and wonder who lives there (The Mr. and I still drive by the first, dinky 720-sq.ft. house we ever owned and we haven't lived there in almost five years). In 10 years I'll walk up to the door and ask if I can come in. I'll look at my old room and remember playing with Barbie on the window sill and listening to the radio with the window open. I'll remember staying up late writing on my typewriter slash computer, and marking the days on the calendar that my boyfriend and I made love.

And when I leave, although I have my own home where my family is making its own memories, I'll still be in mourning. Mourning the drive up the tree-lined hill that always made me feel so happy. Mourning the way I always skipped down the front steps, the familiar creaking of the floor boards, scoping out the neighborhood from that second-floor window. Mourning the comfort it gave me when pets died, when I trashed Mom's car on the way to high school graduation, spending every Christmas Eve in front of the fireplace and during weekend visits from college. The mourning of an era.