The Big Blue House has finally sold.

I’m a lot sadder than I thought.

Its not the house, per se; its only wood and pipes and wires, after all. There will be other houses.

Its not really about the memories, though there are some good ones: my adorable little freckle-faced Katie Beth was a three-year-old only child when we moved in. She chose the bedroom with the red carpet… the nasty, fluid-stained, goat-smelling red carpet… We took her to Lowe’s to look at paint samples, and she chose Pink Neon Seizure for her bedroom (I respectfully overruled and chose Laura Ashley Deep Pink 5 instead).

We had a great time with lemonaid stands in the front yard every year during the Azalea Trail. She loved tossing Beanie Babies over the second-floor balcony then patching them up with toilet paper when they were ‘hurt’ (foreshadowing her career in veterinary medicine).

Annie came home from the hospital, in her tiny white gown and tiny white bonnet, to this house. There were baby swings and Baby Einstein and diapers and burps and bottles (that I had to boil because I didn’t have a dishwasher) in this house for the first time in at least 50 years. She learned to talk, to crawl, and to walk in this house, and schooled me in the need for baby gates when I heard a noise overhead, went to investigate, and realized it was THE BABY, who had somehow learned crawled up the STEEP. WOODEN. STAIRS. in the blink of an eye without my knowing it. I praised the Lord through hysterical tears for keeping her safe, and never turned my back again.

Oh, there weren’t all good memories tied to this house, by ANY stretch of the imagination. And those less-than-good memories I’ll have NO trouble erasing forever. Its because of those memories that I’m not even going over to the house to say goodbye. I have no desire.

Today I’m sad about the future plans I had had for this house: I wanted my kids’ growing-up portraits going all the way up the stairwell to the second-floor ceiling. I wanted their bridal portraits taken in front of the azaleas. I wanted my grandchildren to spend Christmases here.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m incredibly thankful that my path went a different direction than I had planned. I’ll be fine by tomorrow.

But today, I need to grieve over my Big Blue House.