100 Eagle Nest Trail

Saying good bye to your childhood home isn't easy. This is the latest battle I face as my parents build a new house and move to Spring Island, South Carolina.

The house they've/we've lived in since 1986 has been sold, and my 24 years of living and visiting the brick two-story at 100 Eagle Nest Trail has come to an end. Mom keeps reminding me that the memories we made there are precious, not the place itself. But I'll still miss it. I know I will . . . my childhood pets are buried in the back yard. My 8th grade dance pictures were taken on those front porch steps. It's where my friends and I would slide down the stairs in our sleeping bags, and where I locked myself in my room when I didn't want to go to piano lessons. It's simply, where I grew up . . . the old familiar, if you will. I would know it's scent from a million miles away. There's a comfort to the place. I'll miss that. I think I'm also scared that I'll forget what it was like.

I don't expect my parents to stay there forever. Whether good bye takes place now or later, there would eventually have to be a good bye. That's the way life goes. And despite the morbid tone of this post, I am happy that Mom and Dad are building a house on the coast. It will be a place we all thoroughly enjoy. And if many years are spent there, it will become dear to us in it's own right. It is quite a gorgeous place, evidenced below.

But as for this little jewel . . .

I said my good byes. I took pictures of every room. I shed some tears. And while someone else may live there now, it will always be, "the house that built me."