"...Mama cut out pictures of houses for years.
From 'Better Homes and Garden' magazines.
Plans were drawn, and concrete poured,
And nail by nail and board by board
Daddy gave life to mama's dream....
I thought if I could touch this place or feel it
This brokenness inside me might start healing.
Out here it's like I'm someone else,
I thought that maybe I could find myself.
If I could walk around I swear I'll leave.
Won't take nothing but a memory
From the house that, built me....."
House that Built Me by Miranda Lambert
I remember for years my mom having these books that were house layout books. I remember being not much older than Sawyer and pretending to sell people the houses that were inside those books. They sat on the coffee table for as long as I can remember. I always knew at some point in my childhood I was going to be moving out of the house we were renting but I never knew when that was going to be. After about 3 years of looking at those books my parents broke ground on their "dream" house.
Fast forwards about 9 or 10 years and a for sale sign was out in the front yard. I was utterly heartbroken and cried just about every time I thought about someone else living in the house I grew up in. Even though it did take a few years before the house would actually sell, any time we had a showing I just couldn't help but think of another family in my house it just didn't seem right.
When my parents built this house, I remember getting to pick out exactly how I wanted to do my room and my cousin painting a mural on the wall for me. It was my favorite thing of the house. I remember it all so vividly. My cousin showing me how she was going to do the clouds in the sky and picked fence up to the window and the grass around the base of the posts. The rest of the room was in my favorite color...purple.
I thought this room was the coolest room ever. As would any 3rd grade girl. Eventually, I outgrew the butterflies and flowers and purple, and moved downstairs to my older sister's room after she got married and moved out. Even though I grew out of this room and had a more teenage room my first room in that house always had a special place in my heart. My mom turned it into a toy room for the grand kids and changed the paint color but never painted over the mural. It was just one more thing I thought I'd be someday showing my kids. Showing them what I picked out as a kid and how cool my room used to be when I was their age.
Of course this was only one room in the whole house. My parents had what I thought was such an awesome house. We had a "Coca-cola" room and a sports room. The Coke room was a 50's themed wet bar area in the basement that had a pool table. It was an awesome room not just because the set up and decor, but the fact that my parents did it all themselves. They dry walled the room and laid the floor down themselves. I remember weekend after weekend watching my parents put so much work into that room to make it into the room that it was. The same went for the sports room. It was an exercise room mixed with all my dad's sports memorabilia. Being a huge sports fan just like my dad, I loved to walk in this room and just stare at everything he had on those walls. I always hoped one day to have a little boy or girl who was into sports as much as me and would find pride in everything Papa had hanging on those walls and eventually maybe get one day and display them in a hang out room when they got older as well.
When my parents finally did sell the house in 2013 I just couldn't even being to imagine what was going to happen to this room. I knew the family had young girls but they would never appreciate this room as much as I did. The walls of the sports room wouldn't tell the stories that they did with all the sports memorabilia did. The Coke room was just going to be a "game" room with a 50's theme to it with the colors and flooring. Those were just a few of the rooms in the house that weren't going to be the same. When we were all done packing and moving everything out of the house I walked through the house one more time by myself just to say "good-bye" to my childhood house. I remember crying as I walked through the halls and standing in my room door one last time. Looking at the den and thinking I'll never come home to my dad waiting up for me to come home safe and watching TV. It was all just so hard to wrap my head around, but with all the tears I was shedding, I had excitement because Jake and I had just gotten the keys to our first house together and we were moving in there the same weekend. I had mixed emotions as the my childhood house was going to have someone else living in it, while I'm moving into my first house I could call mine.
After awhile in our own house, we took a drive past my parents old house and I couldn't believe what I was seeing. When we lived there my dad kept the lawn and landscaping perfect and looking at it as we drove bye it didn't even look like the same house from the outside. Tears welled up in my eyes as we drove by. This house I always felt was my "home" didn't even look like home anymore. I remember always listening to the song The House that Built Me, by Miranda Lambert and thinking back at this house. All the memories. The good times, the bad times, everything. I always felt like that was the house that built me into who I was. It saw my good sides and bad. Saw the tears I shed when my Papa passed away suddenly. The joyful tears I shed after Jake proposed to me. The walls of that house had all the memories of the majority of my childhood. I never could drive past that house again because I wanted to just remember it the way I did from my childhood.
After a few years in our first house together, Jake and I found out we were pregnant for the first time. We ended up losing that baby at nine weeks. After losing that baby the house never felt the same. It didn't totally feel like home anymore. The only thing I could keep thinking was that I wanted to go back to my safe place I called home, then I realized that I could no longer do that. Even when I would drive down the main road that would go back to my parents old house I had a natural want to turn down the subdivision road and go home. That feeling lasted for awhile after the miscarriage. I was lost in many different ways that I didn't realize I was, and the only thing that felt sure and safe was to go back to my childhood house, and not being able to do that was breaking my heart even more. About another 6 months went bye and we finally ended up pregnant again and this time it was with our first born, Sawyer. Around this time my parents were finally making head way on their condo hunt, and were building their own condo. Once their condo was finished, it was the weirdest feeling, but it felt like home just like the apartment did when my parents lived there, yet again I never lived in this place.
After Sawyer was born, I went into a mental downward spiral. I had very bad postpartum depression and anxiety. The only place that felt "safe" to me was my parents condo. A place that wasn't even my house. Every night I would have to go home with newborn Sawyer I would cry. I felt like I wasn't going to be able to do it at home by myself, or that something terrible was going to happen. Once I finally got over that point, home started feeling like home again. Sawyer was growing up fast, and I was pregnant with Sadie at this point. Home was starting to be more like home with each passing day. Sawyers room was the perfect little boys room and I loved sitting in there on the floor with him while he pulled all the books off his book shelf, or all the baskets from his changing table. I remember when I was pregnant with Sawyer and planning his room out. Every little detail I had planned for his room. It was something I had always dreamed of for my little boy. Watching him play in this room, or walking in after a night and seeing him in his crib with a big smile on his face waiting for me to pick him up made home feel like home again.
Then the day came that we found out our little Sadie Lady was a girl. I knew exactly what I wanted in her room as well. I had dreams of how whimsical and magical her room was going to be. Watching the room come together gave me a new light for our house. I had the same cousin who did the mural on my wall as a kid, do one on Sadie's wall in her room. This time it was a lot more detailed but it was so perfect. The little deer, and fairy on a swing. I couldn't have pictured anything better for my baby girl than what her and her husband did. I couldn't wait to bring out baby girl home and lay her in her sweet crib and watch her grow like I had watched Sawyer in his room. Just before Sadie was born I quit working and was home full time with Sawyer. Everything seemed to be normal again and home started to feel like my safe place. Sawyer and I were getting our routine down and getting used to being home all day. Once Sadie came, it all felt natural. I wasn't having my postpartum depression and anxiety like I had with Sawyer. I felt comfortable and happy being at home with my babies.
Shortly after Sadie came along Jake and I decided we needed to have a change. We had been in our house for just over 5 years. I knew the house we were living in wasn't our forever house, but all the same emotions that I felt when my parents sold their house. I was sick to my stomach for weeks. I had never had stress send me into a loop like it was when we were trying to sell our house. We had so many memories and tears and laughs in this house. I felt like I was leaving everything that felt right and comfortable. I was sick about leaving both kids rooms and them never remembering their rooms or even the house. We had one person bite right away on buying the house, and everything seemed to be moving pretty good with the sale. We were still looking around for the perfect house. We had 2 options, find a house and get everything all lined up for moving out of our house and then moving into the new one at the same time, or move in with Jake parents and live with them until we find a house or property and build. We had a list of things we wanted in a house built or not. Every time we went and looked a new house nothing felt like "home". After a few weeks the sale on our house fell through. We had to start showing again on the house, and if you've ever sold a house you know how much work showings are, but then add two little kids to that and showings were my worst nightmare. The stomach pains were coming back and all the stress of this was getting to me again. I started to second guess if selling the house was the right thing to do. We "sold" the house again. Things seemed to be moving in the right direction again. In the list of things for a house, Jake and I agreed that the house needed to be within a 30 minute drive of where we were currently at. Well, easier said than done. All the houses I was finding that I actually liked and checked most of the boxes on our list were at least 1 hour away from where we currently were. It seemed like this was never going to work. I thought we'd never find a place that felt like home again. My brother in law and sister in laws wedding was coming up and then we were going on vacation with my parents so the whole house thing was going to be put on hold until we got back.
While we were on vacation the sale of our house fell through yet again. I was starting to think that we were never going to get our house sold. I was starting to lose hope that we'd ever find our forever house.
After a few weeks of being back from vacation we finally had a solid offer on our house. We were told this time this was the one that was going to stick. At this point I didn't know how to feel. About a week or two after we got the offer on our house, Jake and I were looking online and had found this perfect house out in the country. It checked the majority of the boxes on our list but it was out of our price range. I asked our realtor if we could at least just go check it out in person. I remember the drive out like it was yesterday. Just the drive alone felt like it was something special. I got to the house and even though it was very outdated it felt like home.
Even though it was out of our price range, I remember calling Jake telling him this was the house. I could just tell that this was home and where we were supposed to raise our babies. Jake wasn't sold on the house, but I knew if I could just get him out to see the house he would agree with me 100% that this was the house.
Everything was still going good on the other end with selling our house, but I remember sitting on our swing out back just thinking of all the memories we had in this house, and how this house could tell so many stories if it could talk. This was our home for the last 5 years. We brought our first puppy home here, carried our first baby and then lost him/her there. We brought home a second pup and our first two earthly babes. We had to get rid of our second pup. We had many many laughs in that house, lots of tears were shed, and we had our fair share of fights in that house. How could we leave all of this behind? How could we just pack up all the stuff in our house and leave those memories behind. I grew in that house in so many different ways. Why would I leave that behind?
to be continued to part 2.
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