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Moving: Chapter Five

Endings

Saturday, May 1, 2010

We are embarking (this morning) on what will hopefully be an exciting new adventure. But starting a new chapter means ending an old one. Some chapters are good to end: leaving the apartment was not bittersweet to me and I always welcome the new baby chapter after the pregnancy chapter. Other endings are quite tragic: the death of a loved one, for example. Then there's the happy chapters, the ones that make you just a little bit sad to turn the page because you know that every page you turn brings you that much closer to the end.

When we moved the couches out of the living room and packed up the books, the echoes that trailed our speech spoke of coming changes. But yesterday I emptied the kitchen and the echoes in there warned our hearts that the changes were imminent. We got our children ready for bed for the last time in this house and as we watched them run around the loop like crazies we knew that this was one of the bittersweet endings. When Eli's family moved out of this house when he was 12 and rented it out, he always hoped that someday he'd move back in with a family of his own. We can't know the future for certain, but most likely his goodbyes to the house this time will be forever.

Do not cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
—Dr. Seuss

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