New House, Old Memories.

We are finally in our house!  We moved in on Friday March 5th, and have been unpacking, cleaning, and still working on the house in our spare time. 

A few weeks ago, my parents came up to bring us our stove, refrigerator, and a few other things that have been stashed away at their house for the last little while.  In there were 3 boxes of "stuff" that had accumulated at their house since I was twelve.  Twelve was the first time we moved, and I'm pretty sure my mom was responsible for packing all my things then, which explains why the pile of stuff from the earlier years were pretty slim pickin's.  

But from Twelve til College, we didn't move again, and my "stuff" kept piling up.  I'm pretty sentimental, so every single thing that had a memory was kept.  Letters from my best friend, little trinkets picked up at roadside tourist traps, girl scout badges....everything.

As I'm unpacking all these things from the 3 boxes, I keep wondering what I'm going to find next.  And every single thing that comes out is followed by "Ah! John look at this!", or an "Ohmygosh! I forgot about this!", or an "Oh no.  Let's put that back."   And every time I found something that I just HAD to show John, he just looked at me with this Oh.  great. face.  It actually got pretty amusing. 

But as I pulled out my yearbooks from Middle and High school, and flipped through the pages of absolutely horrific pictures, I started reading the little notes that friends from long ago had written.  And I was swept back.

Back to the years of braces, and big dorky glasses.  Back to big curled bangs and over-sized shirts.  Back to purple outfits with matching purple socks...and matching purple Keds. 

And then I realized, I'm sitting, in the floor, of my tiny first house, with no window treatments, in downtown Raleigh.  The best friend that took up an entire page to write in my year books is still my best friend, even hours apart.  I hear my husband banging around outside and come back to the reality that I'm married, I'm in my mid-twenties, and we re-built this place with our hands.  We have no kids, yet we have dreams of the bedroom I see down the hall being a nursery one day.  He gets a call about work, and I blink a few times to think that he runs his own business, that one day we hope will be enough to sustain us both.

I look back at that girl, with the big dorky glasses, braces, and frizzy hair, and think "I wonder if this is where she thought she would be right now?"

And I don't think so.  I think her image of the Dana of today would be something like this:  she imagined we* would be living on a ranch, with some outrageous number of horses, with some fairytale job which allowed us* to go horse back riding and camping year-around with no one to call boss, and money seemed to grow on trees.  I would be a Veterinarian, but one who somehow never had to be on call and was at home on the farm most of the time.  I would be married, and maybe a child, maybe not. 

Because after all, babies can't go camping and horseback riding.



Are you where you thought you would be?    Definitely, mildly, completely not in the same universe?



*the us and we here is me, both then and now.