This past weekend was a bit bittersweet. For a lot of reasons. There were people who weren’t there we missed. There were people who were there that we appreciated oh so much. And, for me, there was saying goodbye to a house.

A home really. Camp Waterloo is where I learned to call home these past twelve years. And although I kept reminding everyone that no, Thank God I didn’t grow up in this house, one house, because as it turns out that’s why I’m not so sad about leaving. But, as I thought more and more about it, I realized I’ve called Michigan home, Camp Waterloo home, Seymour Road home longer than any house before it.

Sure, I didn’t move to Michigan until I was in the seventh grade. Sure I was twelve-going-on-thirteen, and I only lived there until I was eighteen. But it’s where I came home to, Christmas after Christmas, in college, after college, into my twenties. What they don’t tell you is in your twenties, I think, you really find a home in the house your parents live in. You really crave that I am safe. I am here, feeling that is hard to find elsewhere when you’re living in a dorm, or with roommates.

I’m twenty five, which means my parents have lived in that house for twelve years. And I am sure that the next place they live will elicit the same feelings in me that Camp Waterloo has. And I’ve made a home with Jeff, and it gives me that same safe, here, home feeling I used to crave from Michigan.

I can’t wait for my parents to live in Chicago. To live in the same place as my sister where I can gather my family all at once. Somewhere that I can walk outside to a Dunkin Donuts, and somewhere we can go out to eat without driving thirty miles. I am excited for them to have a new chapter of their lives. But that doesn’t mean I won’t miss Camp Waterloo.

I will miss wide open spaces. I will miss a big backyard. I will miss the bats in the walls, the front porch, the chicken coop foundation where Dad and Mikie knocked down the old chicken coop. I will miss the fire pit, and the nature, and the cats, and the old tin garage, and both side yards, and the fields. I will miss my sixteen-year-old-self’s painting of a sunset, and a moon rise. I will miss the potentially haunted east porch. I will miss the dark.

I will not miss the isolation, or the lack of Italians, or the spiders. Or the bugs. Or the steep staircase. Or lack of coffee joints. Or five mile drive to the highway. Or the mosquitoes in every room. Or the cold, cold, cold winters in a house that never quite gets warm enough. Or the “Shoot I forgot to get…” and knowing there is no way to get whatever ingredient we need. Or the haunted east porch. I will not miss the dark.

Before I drove away for the last time from the house I am sure I will one day drag my kids to see, I made my parents pose in front of the house. One last goodbye to a house that has done my family good. As we move on to a new adventure in a new state, I can’t wait to see what is ahead, but I will never forget Camp Waterloo, Michigan, and the friends, family, and person I became living there.

************************
Thanks to Jeff for taking all the photos of my beautiful, wonderful home.