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Illustration by Marley Allen-Ash
After 26 years at the same address, we’ve decided it’s time to ditch the big suburban house and move to a smaller place closer to the city.
The walls in this house have heard and seen our four children come and go. And come back. And go again.
When we first moved in our oldest (Victoria, then eight) ran excitedly up the front steps, tripped on them and cut open her leg. “I hate this house!” she yelled. Her six-year-old brother Alex was thrilled over being able to run full steam around the unfurnished living room, tripping or not.
Bridget, our six-month-old baby, marvelled at seeing herself in the mirrored wall, which dominated the dining room. Two-and-a-half years later our youngest, Nic, would be the first baby to come home from the hospital to this house.
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These walls went through many changes. The gleeful destruction of that mirrored wall, the painting over a colour that can only be described as “distressed bandage pink” on the bedroom walls and marking up the laundry room wall as the children grew.
The kitchen walls absorbed the noise of chaotic breakfasts, all day lunches, logistically impossible dinners due to the kids’ hockey, dance, soccer and fencing obligations. Not to mention late-night pizza parties and the sleepover pancakes. The walls observed cheers and tears through achievements and disappointments, celebrations and mournful moments.
At our annual Christmas party our walls held up our friends and family, who leaned on them when we ran out of chairs.
The kids’ bedroom walls saw the addition of Justin Bieber posters, Maple Leafs team rosters, mounted Blue Jay gloves, ski maps and snarling rappers. All posted up with commitment and taken down with abandon.
Our hallways went from empty to resplendent with paintings by my artist sister, photos of family and a dresser mirror that my husband inexplicably insisted on hanging upside down for decades.
The stager for selling our house visibly flinched at our attempt to join the “accent wall” trend with chocolate brown. She muttered “horrible” as she sailed through our sunflower yellow kitchen, before stopping to call one of our couches hateful. I like her, though. She likes my sister’s paintings.
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And now as we take apart, throw out, donate and attempt to sell the contents within the walls, we know what has always been true. The memories of what happens in these walls is far more valuable than the contents within them. We don’t want most of the contents they hold anymore, and we know our kids don’t either.
“Do we need to keep your 1987 MBA case study?” I ask my husband.
“Do you care if we throw out this smocked baby dress?” he asks me.
As we sift through the trash and treasures, I’m more than thankful for the ability to take photos with my phone, and send them in seconds to anyone who might want to take over what we don’t want to be buried under.
There are very few things in this house that will end up in my children’s homes. I am more than happy with that, as I know they will be collecting their own future disposable contents with their own memories attached.
Victoria-with-the-scraped-knee didn’t hate this house. She loved it. Until she found her own condo with her husband, and then a suburban house which they have filled with four kids. Their walls are covered with paintings, family photos and kid-created artwork. It’s perfect.
My children are now 23, 26, 32 and 34. They fill their own walls with what is meaningful and joyous to them. I love seeing what those things are, as they mark a path that is owned by them.
For us, that path is changing and change can be hard. I’m not a sentimental person, particularly when it comes to stuff, but the physical labour of changing out the stuff is testing me.
“A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff,” wrote comedian George Carlin.
He nailed it.
As we paint every wall in the house a grey shade of white to make it less horrible and more attractive for sale, I like the idea of a new family moving in with a clean slate, the house and its walls ready to absorb their memories, as our new house waits for ours.
Free pick up for anyone who wants a hateful couch.
Kathy Buckworth lives in Mississauga, Ont.