Dear New Owners,
When you unlock the door to your new house, you’re walking into a clean slate. An empty canvas filled with potential, you have no memories here yet, but you will.
You’ll see some of my memories there immediately. You’ll have to paint over the pantry doorway that has butter knife carvings to mark my growth over the years. You’ll probably have to fix some of the pillars on the stairs that I knocked out of place trying to climb as a little kid. I’m sure you’ll paint over my lemon yellow bedroom walls that are marked with thumbtack holes from old High School Musical and Carrie Underwood posters.
There are other memories; you’ll never get to see though. There are no traces of the apple bobbing contests my friends and I had every year before Halloween in the kitchen. No marks from the time I brought home my first puppy. You can’t hear the sound of me writing songs echoing through the halls. There isn’t a single indicator of any of the times someone told another person they loved them inside those walls.
You see, you’re not just getting my childhood home; you’re getting a place that holds nearly all of my favorite memories. Your children will open Christmas presents in front of the fireplace the way I did. They’ll find all of the best hide and seek spots the way I did, but most importantly; they’ll get to make all new memories unique to them.
This probably sounds weird coming from the girl who is moving out of the house, but you’re so lucky to be moving into it. The house was everything to me growing up. It was a castle for princesses to live in, a battlefield for Nerf gun wars, the site of barbecues, post-game pizza nights, pre-prom photo shoots, the first place I said “I love you”, 15 Christmases, 14 Thanksgivings, and countless slumber parties.
The only advice I can give is NEVER wear fuzzy socks on the stairs because you will fall and bruise your entire body. Also, when your kids are teenagers they will never be able to get away with sneaking in or out because every door and floorboard creeks 20 times louder at night.
It’ll be weird to drive by my old home knowing that it is someone new is living there, but I’m sure you’ll love it just as much as I did.
