Lot's Wife

Well, it's official. I no longer own a home. I was too busy with dealing with the movers while I was there to focus too much on actually leaving my house. But once it was empty and it was time to lock up for the last time, I broke down a little bit.

One of my favorite books as a child was "Goodnight Moon." I thought of that book as I walked through all of the rooms one last time. I said goodbye to the blue bathroom, the fireplace, the red wall, the blue kitchen, the big bathtub...all of the little features of my home. It was a sort of goodbye ceremony.

When I first moved into the house, I lay down on the carpet in the living room and did pretend snow angels. The last thing I did was to sit on that living room floor one more time.

I used to work in the anthropology department of a natural history museum. The powers that be chose to destroy the Hall of Ancient Peoples to make way for a space science exhibit. The people in my department took it very hard. Our new department chair created a ceremony for us to go through that we did one evening. It combined different things such as a Native American smudging ceremony. When we finished, the chair closed the doors to the Hall behind us and said, "This is no longer the Hall of Ancient Peoples. It is just a generic exhibit space." I think the ceremony helped us all to let go.

So, I had my own little ceremony at my house. I said goodbye and locked the door behind me knowing that that was no longer my home. I was tempted to look back as I drove away but I didn't. Couldn't risk turning into a pillar of salt. It's time to look forward.