THIS OLD HOUSE

Instead of going to graves, camping, or lounging around by a pool, we spent Memorial Day Weekend packing up my childhood home.  2955 South 1500 East.  We moved in when I was seven years old - it was twice as large as the house we were moving from, I had my own bathroom, and there was a pool in the back yard - I was in heaven.

As I was sitting on the back porch yesterday, eating lunch, the memories flooded over me.  I remember food fights in the kitchen - there is still orange jello on the ceiling from one - I checked!  I got my first "real" kiss (not the truth and dare kind) on the front yard grass by Bill Clark.  There were hundreds of family dinners and Family Home Evenings in that home.  I remember pool parties, swimming lessons, talks with my parents in the dreaded "den", turning 16, and moving out the night before my wedding.  That home was where all of my children learned to swim, had birthday parties, Easter egg hunts, Thanksgiving dinners and Christmas Eves.  So many good memories were made in that house, and even though we will always have those memories, I feel like I closed a chapter of my life yesterday, I shut a door.  I struggled as I boxed up the last of my dad's remaining things.  The clothes he wore the last few weeks of his life, his shoe horn, his driving gloves, his belts, and his scriptures.  I lovingly placed them in a box, taped it up, and marked it Gary.  The new house will be my mom's, not my parent's, and the memories we make there won't include my dad.

I realize today how lucky I am.  I grew up in a home where there was love.  I grew up in a home where happy memories were made, where I felt safe, where I learned so much.

2955 South 1500 East - Thanks for the memories.