It is Sold!

On Tuesday night, we went to our Real Estate Agent's office to receive offers for our home and it is sold! Wow!!

The entire ordeal was relatively painless, especially when I think back 27 years to when we sold our first home. That was a killer experience that I wouldn't put my worst enemy through, so this was a cake walk in comparison.

Reality can really club you over the head, however, when you see the finality of those four letters 'S-O-L-D'. In 90 days we will move our lives out of this house and into the cottage. And for me, the strangest thing is that instead of 4 lives going there, only two will be. Our kids will be staying in Toronto and carrying on without us - or without us in this house.

So all of us will begin a new adventure. Our son will be moving into an apartment with a friend. Our daughter is already on her own, but anxious about not having us in the "hood" already. And Rick and I are experiencing a mixture of relief and anxiety about not only the move, but our new lives ahead. He is already done working full time. And I will be on the last Friday in April.

We have talked about this day many times in the past few years, and as a glass "half-full" person, I am looking at the whole thing as a big adventure, full of all manner of possibilities. It's the first time since I can remember that I had no idea what would come next. As a "half-empty" person, his outlook is not quite so sunny.

But we have a long history with our new home too. We are leaving one building filled with memories, going to another that has nearly as many. So that is very unlike going to a strange place. And I find great comfort in that.

Surely if we have been able to do the 2-hour drive virtually every weekend for 20 years, we can convince friends and family to come and spend time with us there. And with many others recently retired, or about to be, we will have the freedom to miss weekend traffic when the weather is good. And stay for as long as we are welcome.

I am excited. That's not to say that we won't miss this house. We will, for sure. My daughter cried when I called to tell her we had sold. But I reminded her that there's not a single bad memory here. And isn't that the best way to remember a place? 

Now a single mom with two kids has fallen in love with this house. And they will build their memories here too. And I feel really happy about that.