Thirty-Eight Years

There are big milestone events in everyone’s life. Going off to college. Starting a career. Getting married. Having kids. They grow up and get married and give you grandkids. Retirement. Now, I want to add moving. In today’s mobile society, people move more than ever. We have only moved three times. The first time, after about six months, from our first apartment to a house in New Jersey. We stayed there for four years. We then moved for a new job in Philadelphia in 1979. We’ve been here ever since. We raised two sons. I even rented a studio apartment and commuted on weekends for a job in New York for over five years while we lived here. Our sons are married, and they and their wives have given us four beautiful granddaughters.  My wife and I both dealt with elderly parents who would not move when their health declined, and they couldn’t live alone, or care for a house. Both sets of parents lived two and three hours away. It made a difficult situation worse. When they passed away, we were stuck cleaning out their houses. We had to dig through the history of their lives and ours. We had to throw away things that had a lifetime of meaning, but suddenly were junk that no one cared about anymore. We decided we would not put ourselves, or our sons, in that position.

We looked for almost two years for a new house. We wanted to stay nearby, and we found a home just under ten miles away. We wanted a place with the master bedroom on the first floor. As you get older, going up and down stairs can be a problem. We thought about the $3,000 chair lift we got my mother in the last weeks of her life. She had refused to move out of a three story townhouse. We also wanted the outside maintained. Cutting a big lawn, raking millions of leaves, and sholving snow gets tougher, not easier. So, the first half of moving was done. We had a place to go. Now, we had to sell our house. This is a life changing experience that can feel overwhelming. We didn’t have to move. But we knew if we didn’t do it now, we wouldn’t have the energy or  drive to do it when we got even older. It’s part of taking stock of your life, and not being afraid to move outside your comfort zone.

We have taken good care of the house. We had done some renovations over the years. Just in the last eight years, we installed a new roof, new siding, new heating and air conditioning unit, new electrical service, new water heater. But a house is full of memories, and things you collect over the years that you never threw out. Not only your stuff, but your kids’ stuff. You find toys, baseball card collections, year books, college papers, sports trophies, and old concert ticket stubs. It reminds you of how your life and home evolved over the years.

To sell a house, you have to make it as attractive as possible to a potential buyer. My son had recently moved, and became our house stager. There are rules. First, de-personalize. That means strip the place of any personal pictures. We filled four cartons worth. The greatest mistake is clutter. We had to get rid of all those little things you put on shelves. You have to make the house as big and bright and open and airy as possible.  We took up the rugs, to expose the wood floors. We made sure everything was cleaned and polished. My son went through the house moving and concealing things that we are still trying to find. The idea is to make the buyers visualize themselves in your house. The real estate agent had a photographer come in. She did a great job of making the rooms appear larger. It’s all about getting people in the door.

We listed the house at a price below what our real estate told us it was worth, but higher than what we knew we would get. This is always a delicate balance. In three days, we had about eight people come through. We got an offer. We did ten minutes of negotiating, and we had a deal. We felt relieved and lucky. All we know about the buyers is they are a young couple. We imagine they will start a family and fill the house with new memories.

Some of our friends have asked if we feel badly about leaving a house we have lived in for so long. We have lived here longer than any place in our lives. We grew from twentysomthings to sixtysomethings. The house has always been safe and secure. We now are going through it from basement to attic making those decisions about what to keep and what to throw away, and wondering why we kept some things for all these years. My wife says we are starting a new chapter in our lives. We hope this will be our last move. But we will never forget the thirty-eight years this house was a home.