The Nature Of Change

 When we decided to buy our house, Jared was just a few months old. We were on a very bare-bones budget, so our plan was to look for the worst house in the best neighbourhood. We found one that fit nicely into our plans for everything:

1.  It was in our budget at $32,500. 

2.  It was mere blocks away from the same schools Rick attended, all of them excellent.

3.  The work it needed could be done by Rick and me.

4.  It was an older home, a sort of Craftsman/Cape Cod built in 1940, that had plenty of charming features, especially all natural woodwork and hardwood floors.

We even lived right across the street from Rick's kindergarten teacher. The boys walked to and from school every day to the very same schools their dad did from elementary school through junior high school.  And they rode to school with me for high school. 

Rick and I live in it still, and we still love it. That hasn't changed. But a great deal else has.

Probably you still haven't closed your jaw since reading that we paid only $32,500 for our house. Even back in 1985, that was a hell of a deal. Our house then was a story and a half, two bedrooms, one bath, and a semi-finished attic room, dining room, living room, kitchen. There was a garage, but there was a huge tree in front of half of it, and it was in pretty bad shape (the garage, not the tree). Full basement, too, unfinished, but dry (at that time).

Houses certainly don't go for that now. We're constantly astonished when we read what homes in our neighbourhood sell for. 

Rick's kindergarten teacher, who you met in 2009 in this post, and learned more about in this one, this one, this one, and finally this one, has been gone for almost ten years now. Her home was a rental for a bit, but soon it went on the market. Its new owners are a young family; they have two little boys. I often watch my new friend Charlotte managing Ollie and Archie and think back to my early days in this house. Astonishingly and poignantly, Charlotte planted rows of marigolds along her front walk. I felt the Universe come full circle.

Sometimes my walk takes me through the parking lot of the elementary school that Rick, Jared, and Sam once attended. It's five blocks from my house. The oldest part of the building is older than my home. It has beautiful brickwork and scrollwork. So many memories are there, but there are no longer any children. Our city built all new schools with levy funding and grant money. They're State Of The Art and safer. They're far more able to handle the demands of new technology and security. They have air conditioning and smart boards and beautiful libraries. 

This school is now owned by the hospital next door, who is leasing it to police, fire, and rescue for school shooter drills and other training. During the pandemic its parking lot held refrigerated trucks for makeshift morgues. I once peeked through its front windows and saw that it looked the same as it did the very day the last kids left it on its final day of school in 2021. I don't do that anymore; it made me sad and uneasy. But I'm so grateful for the time my sons spent there and the memories they made.

Once in a while, people take their dogs to play in the field where the playground equipment used to be. I love to see that. And neighbourhood kids sometimes run and skateboard and bike down the big hill that I walk up briskly to strengthen my knees.

I think about the Nature of Change and how easy it is to mourn for the Past. We miss and grieve for things we can no longer have. It is our nature. Loss feels final to us. We are conditioned to rail against it.

But in so many cases, Loss is not final or fatal. It's merely Change, Metamorphosis; Matter, as we were always taught, can neither be created nor destroyed, merely transformed from one form to another.

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