I was born and raised an orphan...

I grew up in a tiny tiny town in Tennessee. If you removed the law enforcement aspect of the Andy Griffith show, then at times you'd have captured the quintessential nature of my childhood home. My parents bought a little two bedroom stone house when my older brother was 6 months old, two years before my arrival on this planet.

As I grew, so did the house. My parents added a bedroom and bath before I was born, building much themselves. For most of my early years there was no hall, and the door to my parents' room was in my room. Perfect for a young girl who was prone to irrational fears of the dark who snuck into her parents bed every night until she was way too old to be doing so. When I was 8, the back patio with the sliding glass door became the hallway. The carport became the den (paneled...so 1988). A two car garage replaced the circle drive in the side yard. Finally, a place to put my bicycle so I didn't have to scrub the rust off with Brillo pads every spring.

The parsonage for our church was next door. Andy, a sweet man who died a couple of years ago, was our pastor most of my young life. He and his wife Ruby were so sweet and kind. The giggled when at age 4, I asked, "Preacher, you want to see my new panties?" (He said yes and nothing made me happier than raising my dress to show everyone..luckily, I grew out of that)!

Across the front street, were a factory worker (actually pretty upperclass for our rural area) and a bank president! There was a smaller house that a poor but clean (the measure of worth..cleanliness) family. On the other side street was a rental house, where a little boy named Glenn lived for quite some time. He was our constant play mate and yet, also someone who we avoided like the plague. He always had a snotty nose, his parents didn't keep watch over him, and so he had no level of social skills. He never wanted to go home.

Up and down the street were the mostly older people who I went to church with, who taught my Sunday school class, who came to the youth spaghetti dinners, who uncomfortably sang the praise choruses on youth Sunday. Two houses down was Aunt Hazel and Pop, my Granny's sister and her husband. I would visit and she always gave me pennies out of a brass frog in her living room. Right next door was my Great Great Great Aunt Ella. Mowed her own yard until she was 93, died at 96 when I was in high school. She always said she never married because her boy must have died in the war (The first WWI!). Across the street from Ella, my Great Great Aunt Effie and her husband Homer. My maternal grandfather might have left my mom and her family, but all of his family knew he was wrong, and they were my neighbors, friends, and teachers in the church. They always were welcoming.

A 1/2 mile bike ride away lived (and still does) Granny, my maternal grandmother. She babysat my brother and I every summer. My mom, me, my brother, and Granny...we went to "town" every Friday and did our shopping. Walmart, grocery store, and so on.

A mile away, next to the interstate lived Papaw and JoJo, my other grandparents. We visited them every Sunday afternoon. They had land so we gardened there, they had sheep once, my Papaw always had some new tractor/toy/motorized vehicle for us to come see. My cousins lived with my grandparents, so I always had built in playmates there.

Just past Papaw and Jojo another mile lived my Aunt Susan and her husband Charles. They lived in the "country" with neighbors who had horses. She was the assistant coach with my softball team. They came over every Friday night well until I was a teenager.

Still within the area, were my other 8 aunts and uncles. All of my great grandparents (I knew them all but one who died of brain cancer before I was born) lived in the area.

We rode our bikes all over town with no worries about safety, and no helmets. The church was two blocks away, on the other side of the rail road tracks. The church where my parents got married. The church where I got married! The "Country Market" where I bought lunch sandwiches and YooHoo! to drink every summer at 11:30 was just past the stop sign. My parents had their turn at owning the Country Market when I was in high school. My neighbors were witnesses to my brother and I growing up, changing, maturing. They fostered us, angered us, and dare I say, loved us. I didn't even realize it was community because I had never NOT had community.

The house grew even as I left for college, graduated, got married, moved away with my husband for graduate school. A new front porch, somewhere along the way it became a vinyl siding house, a new room upstairs over the den. A library where the side porch used to be. A patio to a hot tub patio back to a patio then to a screened in porch where my parents now eat breakfast every spring and summer morning. Add a deck, and a waterscape. Add some beautiful landscaping. (I always irritated my brother because mowing was boring for me if you did it in a straight line. His precision cross over looked like a baseball field). The shed became enclosed, hand shingled by my brother and father. On and on...

And yesterday, my mom told me that she and my dad would like to sell the house in a few years when they retire. They want to sell MY HOME. The corporate box that my husband and I live in isn't home. It's not even in the right place...Chicago?! I think if we had children and owned a home, then this new would not feel like such an insult to my senses, but it stung. Tears burned at my eyes and an aching in my chest signaled the loss that the selling of this place, this town, this history is to me. It's like selling my heritage. When all else is horrible, there is a huge comfort in knowing that I could get to that house and that my parents would be there. The back door might even be open if they knew I was coming.

I understand my parents' desire and what they want to have if they sell the home has distinct advantages for hubby and I. They want to buy some land, closer to the city where my brother and his soon to be wife live, where we'll live when I graduate from school. They want to have animals, and board horses, and have a garden. They specifically mentioned having their grandchildren over to pet goats! (albeit, no grandchildren nor goats in the family at this time).

But I think that the loss for me will be like a fellow blogger described here. I feel like I'm going to be homeless.