the ghost in you, she don't fade

I am spending one last night in the house I have lived in for 25 years and I am tripping out a little.
I have been seeing ghosts all week. Packing is nuts- I have such a new appreciation for people who move, who have moved, who move multiple times, who move with little kids, who move across country- all the different types of moves are so hard! And there is so. much. stuff.

 But the coolest part is finding all the memories. We lived such a good life in that little house. And now that it is getting broken down, we are down to just a couple of pieces of furniture, it feels so much like it did in the beginning. It's like I'm going back in time and all of the pictures and memories I have been packing are swirling around my head like I stuck it in the Pensieve from Harry Potter. I walk through the kitchen and I think of all the meals, and shots, and jokes and parties and times we spent in there. Rainbow light from my prisms spinning around the walls. I look at the laundry room door and I picture sitting on the floor, Marley in my lap, giving birth to all 10 puppies as she pushed against me.

Our backyard that used to have a sunflower house, and a little garden and our avocado tree, where Bash first used to skateboard and hit his head that time. Later, soccer goals with Marley playing goalie against Bash and Cameron. Greg always on the bbq, a million Coors Lights. Kids, then teenagers, beer pong and music and kegs. The deck Greg built by hand, so strong you could "land a plane on that thing". All of our signs, the lights! We loved our backyard so much.

Bash's door, with all the stickers, that used to have the water color sign I painted that said "Shhhhhhh baby sleeping" and he did. He slept through all of it, such a good baby, such an important part of all of us. Jeff's backpack in the corner of Bash's room, when he lived with us as our Au Pair. Shir Khan, looking right into the crib like he couldn't wait to snack on that little baby, Peter Pan and the pals flying over his head, that glowing Moon.

Our room. Where we slept and fought, and fell more in love. I fed my baby in that bed, and napped and put together Christmas stockings and Easter Baskets and talked on the phone and cried and read and dreamed.

Even our little corner of the dining room. So many good jokes around that table! All of our Thanksgivings, and all the kids that came over to eat over the years, piling food on that table until there wasn't an inch left. Squeezing more on still. There is still glitter in the cracks from all of the crafts, pencil marks from all the homework done on it. The dinner music play lists. That big burn from the time we left a candle burning, all the times it looked so pretty, all the kids who slept underneath it after all the parties.

Our whole living room, The football and baseball games. The before softball game gatherings. The playdates, the entire room taken over by the most amazing Batman set ups, with a zip line running from Wayne Manor down into a Bat Cave for all the good guys and Alec Baldwin leading the bad guy gang over in the Fisher Price Castle. Girls Game Nights. Old Lady Book Clubs. All the parties, the card games and dominoes, all the friends and kids who slept on the couches and the floor. All the movie nights and setting up the whole floor like a giant bed to watch all together. Greg hanging out in the window while he barbequed. The Easter egg hunts. The Christmases. New Years Eves. The way the vines hang in front of our windows, the lights in the backyard glowing through.

All of our life.

The ghosts are in every corner, every time I look around. Our friends and family who were gone too soon. Our childhood and our youth. Our dog. My baby. I am putting that part of my life in a box and saying goodbye to a life that I thought I would have forever. And I know in thirty days, sixty days, I will feel the freedom that comes with this change, but right now, today, I have to take a day to say goodbye.

inside you, the time moves, and she don't fade
the ghost in you, she don't fade

The #9thStSocialClub is dead. Long live the #9thStSocialClub.