closing closure

note: chris thinks this post should carry with it a cheesiness warning. if you don't feel like indulging me as i wax poetic, which is entirely understandable, then just come back in a few days when i'll assuredly be back to normal. i'm driving to asheville today to meet the movers and to attend the closing of our house tomorrow morning. after so many months of frustration in selling it (see post ... and follow-up post ... and follow-up-to-the-follow-up post ... hmm, have i been a little obsessed?), our journey has finally ended. i'm reminded of the cycle of life, ebbing and flowing, whenever i look at my children. it's easy to see how they grow and change on an almost-daily basis. susanna's dress that was so precious on her two months ago is now a little too snug for comfort. the tricycle that liam used to ride with abandon is now better suited for his sister. with each new book we check out from the library, liam's reading ability grows and grows; last night he read a 30-page story cover-to-cover that would have been difficult for him last month. whether external or internal, their development is moving at warp speed and we're constantly amazed at what each new day brings. but adults are harder to gauge. i think we sometimes focus so much on our children that we forget that we're just as involved in the cycle of life as they are. as i packed a few things in my overnight bag for my trip, it hit me how different i am from when i made that same exact drive five years ago. i drove to asheville back in 2003 knowing no one on that side of the state but my husband. we spent the first night in our house in sleeping bags on the floor, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the few furniture pieces we owned and wondering how we would ever possibly fill the rest of the rooms. it was just the two of us, navigating our way through a new town with new jobs and a new home and with no family nearby. so we became our own little family there in that house. it's where i excitedly painted the nursery walls, vomited for almost eighteen months with unrelenting morning sickness, and brought my newborn son and daughter home from the hospital. it's where we rocked our babies to sleep, cleaned up catapulted pureed peas from the carpet, and installed every babyproofing device known to man only to watch our children defy them all. it's where we questioned ourselves with every confusing and new experience that parenthood brings. i became a mother in that house. chris became a father in that house. our children, well, they became people in that house. five years of our family memories will forever be tied to that two-story structure. i guess that's why they call the final step in the sale of a house a "closing": we're closing a chapter of our lives when we say goodbye. and what a great chapter it was. we've got a 10:00 appointment on tuesday morning to purchase our new house in raleigh. and i think i might just start referring to it as our "opening".