Erasing myself
“I’m erasing myself from the narrative.”*
Today I’m taking down magnets and the child art they hold from the fridge. I’m taking the religious art down in my office. I’m stripping away the details that make this house our home.
I’m packing away dreams. We bought this house imagining a life, picturing generations gathering in these rooms, eating at this table, running up and down these stairs. I’ve pictured the teenagers who would hang out here. I’ve imagined so many holidays. We have discussed dreams for adding an extra story if our adult children wanted or needed to live in this house.
Instead I’m putting that life in boxes and taping it up — not because our dream changed; not because something better came along; just because our government has chased us away.
And so we are beginning the work of erasing ourselves from this house. Painting the upstairs bathroom a nice, neutral color. Removing children’s chairs from the reading room to make space. Moving our patio table to the screened porch. Eventually we will hide our kitchen appliances and stash our toothbrushes, because the art of real estate is making a house look like a person could live there, but doesn’t quite. It is all about the work of imagination. . .
My imagination is dashed. I remember cleaning rocks and garbage out of a garden bed. My then-kindergartener told everyone who came for the free rocks, “Mama has big plans for this place!”
But those plans are being stored. This house will soon have someone else’s name on the title.
We look forward to the safety we are fleeing to, but it isn’t without pain. I want to be clear: we do not want to move. I do not want to leave my job. I don’t want my kids to leave their schools. I don’t want to say goodbye to the community that has held us and cared for us and shared in life with us.
But today, I turn this home into a house and feel my heart breaking.
(*”Burn” - Lin-Manuel Miranda)