My House on Milo

A last look, taken just a couple days ago.

Today the new owners moved into my old house. After spending the past week cleaning up after the last tenants and haggling over how much deposit money they'll get back, I feel a sense of relief. I spent ten years of my life at that house--purchasing it in '94 with my ex husband P. By the time I moved out I was divorced, had gotten a dog, changed careers and was engaged...again. The past five years it's been a rental and sadly, I've watched it get more run down every year.

I lived alot of life in that little house, all the time wishing for a bigger kitchen, or a bathtub or more closet space, but as I spent the last day over there cleaning, I missed it. I missed the way the wood floors creak, the way the light streams in through the back windows, I missed it's smell. I remembered nights by the woodstove writing in my journal, sitting in the sun smoking cigarettes on the back deck, planting scads of flower pots on the front deck. Even though it's been five years since I've lived there, it could have been yesterday,the house is so familiar to me.

I'm so excited to pass it on to the new owners...an industrious couple in their 30s: he is a carpenter and she is a Montessori school teacher who watches our children. The sweet irony of it is that I'm still not really leaving that house, our children will be there three days a week, but now I get to just stand back watch it's transformation.