It may have been right place, right time.  It may have been happy thoughts and love poured into these walls.  Whatever it was, it got us sold before we even had a chance to get used to the idea of selling.  Second person through.  Offer.  Done.

"We're really going to miss you around here, Amanda," says the sixty-something neighbor who flirts with every female in a ten mile radius - calling me Amanda even though I've told him a million times that I am not Amanda.

"We'll miss it, too," I tell him with a grin and a wave though I'm pretty sure I'm lying.

I do love this house and the memories we've strung up about the place - the laughs that rang against painted paneling and the tears and snot all ground into the creases of the floor from tantrums and fights and forts that fell off the kitchen chairs.  But I'm pretty sure I won't look back.  I'm pretty sure I won't be out at the deck barbeque, basting the chicken and wishing Mr. MacDonald would walk passed and say, "Oooeeee, Amanda, that smells good....what's for supper tonight?"

I was built for country.  I was formed to live where the moon is brighter and the sun sets beyond the dining room table and the trees moan and sing and the berries grow wild.  A place where my porch swing can be set beneath a branch, far removed from the probing eyes of the lonely seniors all press-nosed against their panes to see what those Rusnak's are up to now.  I was made for room to breath and be and sing with the windows open.  I was made for forty feet of laundry line - dancing sheets, those pretty maids all in a row.

So now we face the daunting task of folding up this life-as-we-know-it, packing it into boxes procured from the local liquor store, journeying it one mile down the south highway and building up into our own that home that housed my growing.

I will take my heart and hang it on the doorpost.  We will rub every little wrinkle with pieces of ourselves.  We will claim it as our own.  We are going home.