"O.k. we can't talk about hockey anymore," my mom says, suddenly serious, "we have to talk to you." And for the second time in my life I feel a real fear, the type of fear you can only feel when your healthy mother, at the age of sixty, says the words "we need to talk." 

I was quickly reassured by her mannerisms that it was not about her health. And in those split seconds before the words came out, I was able to process the fact that it couldn't be about anyone else's. She would never be the one to tell me if it were.

"We've looked at an apartment." And right away my whole world, walls and roof, fall down. 

I'd completely forgotten about last year when I'd heard the Realtor's message on the answering machine. Or the time they snuck out to do "some business" one Tuesday before our girls night. I'd forgotten how my sister and our girlfriends all sat around outside, on our deck, and analyzed, concluded, that there was no way they would sell this house. As time passed, nothing happened, and we forgot.

I already knew this would be the year I finally left here for good, actually set off on my own, not to follow a boy, not to follow adventure, but to begin my own life in my own place. I decided after my birthday this past December, after, yet, another heartbreak, it was time to start my life. I had finally accepted that perhaps someone wasn't going to come in and sweep me off my feet, carry me down the easy road, and so, I had to carry myself. I knew that at the end of December 2011 I would not be in the same place physically, mentally, emotionally as I was in December of 2010. It would be my year's mission. I began actively pursuing apartments in the area, setting my heart on an old building, a classic heritage building only three blocks from where I currently live. I was scared, but knew I'd survive because there is never any other option.

So when my mother and step father proceed to tell me of their plan, it is not the helplessness of homelessness that brings tears to my eyes, but the complete desolation of losing this house.

Twenty two years, two marriages, three newborns, new sisters, countless move outs, and even more moves back, love, life, laughter and death. This house, these walls, this magical place, empty of us. Us empty without it. I knew it was my time to move on, but I always assumed I could come back. I had dreamed of this house one day becoming mine, I had called it, and believed it, the best house in the world, and most of those who have walked through it's doors, felt it's love, have agreed. 

Yesterday I spent crying, today I've tried to see the good side, mostly I've tried not to think. Yesterday memories flashed through my mind non stop. Yesterday I decided to count the times I walked out the door from now until the last, today I couldn't bare it. Devastation does not begin to describe the emotion that has taken me over and will, I'm scared to admit, hold me in its grips for as long as I am capable of thought. For all my life to come, no matter what home I make mine, and what way my life may go, this home will be where everything that ever happened to me to this point, happened. This home saved my life, this home made my life, made me me. It is not walls and mortar, gyprok, and hardwood floors, this house is magic and love, and life itself. It is not simply the house I grew up in, I grew up many places. It is not simply a family home, it was magic before we got here and from there it grew, we grew, the memories and the people that fill this place, breathe life into the very walls. The stories on the deck, the tears cried into the carpet, the laughter barreling down the halls, always an open door, always scratches on the floor, wine in the wine rack, tea in the tea pot. It's been everyone's home, sheltered everyone's despair, blow after blow.

And I do not know how to breathe, knowing one day it will be empty, and then holding someone new.