Growing up my house was always messy. We were always one of those families that scrambled to pick up the house as best we could whenever we would be having company. This same tactic was used when our house all of a sudden went up for sale. Dino, an old friend of my dad’s and now our realtor, would sometimes call unexpectedly telling my parents someone would be coming to look at the house shortly. This is when all hell broke loose and our house turned into a war zone. My mom and dad shouting out orders, “Andrea, you and Stephen cover the living room, Tommy, you clean up the basement, Brian go make sure your room isn’t a pig sty!”
I hated how that Century 21 Real Estate Sign sat in the corner of your yard and all the emotions it would soon bring to me. My brothers and I would sometimes throw rocks at the sign and try and destroy it, thinking that would somehow fix our situation. The tears finally came when SOLD was posted on to that already horrible sign, as if it wasn’t bad enough.
There was nothing I could do to change the fact that we were moving, I just had to accept this fact and try to look on the bright side. But back then I couldn’t think of a bright side. The feeling of moving boxes lined the walls of our house. Day by day our house felt less and less like home as the picture frames, books, and decorations from each room were packed away in boxes labeled and taped. We must have gone through twenty rolls of that moving tape throughout the whole process. Packing up my room was the worst! My Amazing Days of Abbey Hayes books and the numerous diaries I had filled with the honest truth from first to sixth grade had their own box. While packing those books and diaries into the boxes, I cried. Tears fell from my eyes as I read all of the entries of the life that I would be leaving. Countless pages were filled of the names of my numerous elementary school crushes, I love Brad and I love Sean, or the occasional A.F + J.S = LOVE. I cried too while reading all of my stories about David, the dark haired boy who lived in the house up the street from me, who was also my best friend. I was coming to the realization that I would be leaving the blue walls of my room forever. I threw away the Andrea’s Room sign that I had drawn in bubbles letters with purple marker because it simply wasn’t going to be my room anymore. My bedroom, the sanctuary of my home, the place where I would stay up late with my friends whispering and sharing secrets with one another no longer belonged to me. It was wired think about MY room, would soon become someone else’s bedroom. I wondered if I was leaving it to a girl like me to fill it with her own posters and pictures, or if it were to be transformed into a boy’s room, or maybe even an office. I wondered if the walls would stay that shade of blue that I loved and was so indecisive on that one spring day in Home Depot when I decided I wanted to paint my room.
I woke up early that day in late August 2007. My mom and dad already began to pick up the rented moving truck. I never realized how red the carpets were until I saw my house so bare and empty. As everything that made out house a home made its way into the crammed moving truck it was time to say our goodbyes.
My mom’s old piano was the last thing piled into the truck. We were giving it to David’s family in fear that we wouldn’t have enough room for it in our new home and also because his younger sister Sophia was beginning to play the piano thanks to my mother’s lessons. Confused, my brothers and I watched my mom climb in to the back of the truck. We watched her play the piano in the back of the truck all the way up the street to David’s house. Her favorite Irish songs echoed through the street of 235 Tisdale Street on her old, slightly out of tune piano.
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