Have I mentioned that my parents are moving? They are. Saturday. This Saturday. I’ve been trying to ignore this possibility for the past few months, partially because I never honestly thought it would happen, and partially because it’s a painful thought for several reasons. **Part where I bitch excessively about my parents omitted**

I am getting a little overwhelmed with the idea of losing the house that I grew up in. It’s not like my childhood was all that fabulous, it’s not like we were some big happy family all the time, but it’s still my home base. True, I own a house with my husband now, but there’s this very immature part of me that still feels like a kid whose place in this world is completely relative to her mom. I always felt like that house was my real home, where my roots sprouted and where I developed my sense of myself. That house was always the common denominator, a place to call home in between renting apartments in strange buildings from strange people in strange cities and generally just living tentatively. Even now amid home improvement projects and mortgages, I still feel like that’s my true home. I lived there longer than I lived anywhere.

After Saturday, I will lose all my ties to that house where I put on lip-synching performances in the dining room archway and opened Christmas presents and hugged my grandmother for the last time, all my ties to Legion Place, where I used to play in Aimee’s back yard with Jack and Evan and run through the sprinkler on hot days, all my ties to Closter, where I walked to school and ate lunch at the Red Maple with Melissa and Lisa and Kim and fed ducks at the nature center and trick-or-treated every year, all my ties to Bergen County, where I went to the movies and lifted kids onto the carousel at Paramus Park and drank coffee at the Northvale Diner and kissed boys.

This is all happening very quickly, this adult life of mine. Within the span of a year, I will have bought a house, gotten married, seen my friends have babies, and lost my childhood home. I can hardly bear it.