Our home.

Three years ago, my parents were planning to move out of the house I'd grown up in. It's not a big thing. Just a split level, 3 bedroom, 2 bath. It's no different from the 50 other houses that line the block. The paint is different and not much else. But to me, that was home. It had my memories. So, when they decided to move, John and I decided to move in.

I started ripping away the wallpaper first, so that I could paint the bedrooms. Removing one layer of wallpapper revealed another, and another - the layers of my childhood. My first years, with blue stripes and colorful tulips, and my older years, when I fell in love with pink (10 years with pink walls and roses may be why I'm not all that fond of pink now).

I discovered drawings downstairs when I peeled back the wallpaper there. Memories of an unfinished basement, my sister and I playing soccer across the concrete, my mom giving us chalk to draw pictures across the floor and walls, came flooding back as I looked at drawings. John looked over my shouler as I smiled at one drawing in particular, a stick person jauntily drawn. "Hmm. You must have been the artist there."

There have been some not so wonderful things, too. The furnace breaking down during the winter. Lights that flicker on and off. Water leaking through the ceiling. But it hasn't been anything I wouldn't expect with a house this age. And to me, it's well worth it.

Becuase this morning, as I drove away for work, I looked back up at the window, where now, my little boys sit in our nanny's arm and wave goodbye to me as I drive away. Years ago, that was me, waving to my mom each time she drove away. That same window. That same sad look on my face.

One day, we will grow beyond this house. I can't imagine it being large enough for two teenage boys and the friends they will bring over. One day, I will have to drive away and look back, knowing no one is waiting to wave from the window.