TANGERNTS: A house full of memories

TANGERNTS By John Saccenti More than just a place to live.

   There’s a house I visit sometimes when I’m dreaming. It’s not any house I’ve lived in, but a house that has a little bit of what seems like every house I’ve ever visited or stayed in.
   In it I’ll sometimes see my cousins when they were young, playing in their Queens, N.Y., home, or old college friends hanging out in their dorm room. Other times I’ll be wandering around my childhood home searching for hidden passageways that I know are there, or remembering things that, when I wake up, I’m not sure ever really happened.
   The house changes every time I visit, well, almost every time. The one constant is that I almost always end up in my old, Kendall Park home.
   I wonder what that dream will be like next time, when in the waking world I can no longer return to that childhood home.
   My parents are getting ready to move. Not far, from one end of town to the other. I’m not sad about it, heck, I’ve moved out of the house three times already. I’m more, oh, I don’t know, thoughtful.
   My parents’ plan is to get out by the end of the year, which means I’m getting ready to help pack all sorts of items. Many of those things I’ll undoubtedly throw away, others things I’ll want to keep.
   But, I won’t be able to throw away my time there, and that is what makes losing the old homestead the hardest.
   For as long as I can remember, that Kendall Park house has always been home. Its fridge has always been full, its couches comfy and its televisions always with a good show on, and while there are no secret passageways like in my dream, there are memories around every corner, and closets full of stuff I haven’t thought of since I was a boy. And while I’m not sad now, I can’t guarantee that I won’t be once its doors are finally closed and locked to me.
   What will I miss most? Probably that familiar, safe feeling I get pulling up to its driveway. The warm, welcoming feeling I always took for granted when I walked in. My bedroom. What do I dread the most? Driving by and not pulling into the driveway. Not opening the front door to see my mother and father. Never again heading to the back yard to tell my daughter which trees I used to climb, and which ones I didn’t.
   We just had what will most likely be our last holiday in the home, Thanksgiving. For some reason, it wasn’t as traumatic as I thought. In fact, very little seemed out of the ordinary, and thoughts that it would be our last holiday there never entered my mind.
   Holidays come and go, and no matter what you’re celebrating, there is always another celebration lurking somewhere in the future.
   But childhood memories are special. And when you have a house full of them, well, sometimes it’s a little hard to say goodbye.
   It’s the little things that are hard to part with, the moments that make you smile or cry when you picture them happening over again in your kitchen, or hallway, or high up in one of the backyard trees: Running around in a homemade superhero costume pretending to be Batman or Captain America, sitting around watching television, wrestling with brothers or remembering how things felt at different times.
   Sure, you can do that stuff almost anywhere, and we all have homes now where new memories are made. But you can only do it the first time once, and the first time for many things I treasure happened in that Kendall Park home.
   And from now on, I’ll have to visit that place only in my dreams.
John Saccenti is news editor for the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. He can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].