Goodbye to the House in South Weymouth
Here's to 36+ years of memories: holiday parties, start-of-summer slumber parties, soccer, kickball, sledding, learning to do the running man in the icy patch in the side yard, starting the writing of TWO books of poetry during my last years living there while in grad school, not to mention the first stories, poems and lyrics I wrote as a little kid.
The fights, the laughs, the endless birthday parties, the cramming of 8 people in there during the late 90s/early 00s, my LEGENDARY graduation party where several of my close friends' younger siblings got into all kinds of trouble afterwards, and I got in some myself. The pool, the pool breaking ("Oh! The pool broke!"), the abundant garden, the crab apple tree, the billion ways my brother got himself into trouble (crab apples thrown from street-facing 2nd story window; setting house on fire almost; the parties while my parents came to visit me at school, etc).
Visits from friends and family near and far, watching my visiting UMaine friends marvel over everyone's super thick Boston accent during dinner, walking home from school and arguing about politics even though I was in elementary school, playing "CAR!" for way too many hours to make sense, the boyfriends my father terrorized (oh my god, so many--best was the shaking of the carving knife in the face), the beloved pets, the formal and semi-formal dances, the "swamp" in the backyard, the train tracks, the neighbors, the magic that was Fulton school & the dozens of friends we can still claim from way back when, the paper route that got passed from me to Greg to Chrissy and then to the "next generation" of neighborhood kids.
The banal days, Pond Plain, the Rez, fighting about Monopoly then going out for pints, reading so many favorite books in all the best nooks upstairs and down, the place where we watched many Boston Championship wins, learning to ride bikes at Keeler Leather, Patty's 50th, Chrissy's goodbye party, the news that Lucas was on the way just as Mom had decided to move.
Bringing my laundry from Maine, bringing my laundry from West Roxbury, the time I forgot to pack a basket into my car from the driveway that was all clean underwear and someone stole it so I had no underwear when I got up to Orono for Spring '00 so Mom sent me a care package of all new underpants, and some of them were kinda sexy and my friends said, "Oh la la, Bridge, does your mom want you to have SEX?!"
The sad final goodbye this year and the myriad awesome family & family friends who helped my mom get it ready and sold, and, most notably, the place where both my Nana and my Dad took their last breaths.
It was a wild ride, man. And whomever is there next, in whatever the next iteration is, good luck to you--and I hope you are also lucky to be blessed with at least half so many cherished memories as we were.