Today, my Mum and Dad are moving into a new, smaller home, some 15 minutes up the track. They’ve moved out of the family home that they have been in for 25 years; where they lived when my sister was born, and where us kids all grew up and left home from. Since they were left with an empty nest, a large and hilly section, and a house that was “designed by somebody who hates the sun” (according to Bear) it was time for Mum and Dad to move on.
The process happened very fast. In the last days of May, they fell in love with a little place which was for sale by tender. They missed out on that one, but pushed through to put their house on the market anyway. After a decade of worrying about how long the place would take to sell, and having to sell it in the middle of winter, they had a cash buyer the first day after it came on the market, and they have turned around and bought their new place to move into today.
On the day they moved out, I took the girls, a rug, a stack of paper napkins and a batch of cinnamon-swirly scones around, and we all sat on the rug with Mum and Dad and my sister in the empty lounge, for one last time.
It is a big change. The old house is a 10 minute walk from our house, and a 3 minute detour from our walk to Beetle’s school, and was a very convenient place to pop in between morning-goings-out and end-of-kindy-pickup. And besides, we have a lot of memories there.
But (once I have driven that motorway-run “up the track” a couple of times) we will soon be settled in to the new place. Bear’s parents have lived in 4 different places since we got married, and once you go to the new place a couple of times you don’t really think about the old one any more.
Today, Billie and I drove past the old house. I thought Billie might not understand, but she just said “Nanny’s old house. Nempty now.”
She gets it. In the next few months, I’m going to miss having Mum so close by. But I’ve lived 10 and 20 minutes away from her with a baby before; I can do it again.
