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In case you don't know, moving is a very stressful event for kids like me. We embrace routine. That's why we take that walk we've taken hundreds of times before so full of verve, as though it's our first time down the trail. I was five going on six when they broke the news and had so many fantastic memories attached to my kingdom. I grew up there, and spent every weekday having fun with Mom until Dad came home from Honda. Look at today's photo selection if you need evidence. The comfortable furniture, walks in the local park, fine dining, modeling traditional Korea clothes, restful moments, cheery holidays, wearing matching homemade knitwear, rousting monsters outside the door. Not to mention the many trips I've recounted to you in earlier tales. Move now? Why? Looking back, it made sense. Selling the house was stressful for Mom and Dad, too. Deciding what to ship overseas generated even more stress. Selling first meant less stress later for all of us. But I didn't appreciate what moving meant until Mom went into action later that month.
At first, she spent hours in our basement sorting through boxes. Soon after, the sorting shifted from room to room upstairs. When Dad came home, he moved some piles to the garage and, twice a week, to the street for garbage pickup. One day, Mom saved $650 by repairing our second bathroom bathtub herself. Years earlier, rust began seeping out of miniscule cracks in the porcelain finish, catalyzed by the salt she'd used to make a winter batch of kimchi in the tub. Our neighbors visited, too. They spent a few minutes looking at this or that piece of furniture, had a cup of coffee, and left. Then, over the course of a week, a parade of well-dressed people toured our house. I watched the entire process from Mom's arms. One man knew our house very well. He'd sold it to the first owners, the people Mom and Dad bought it from. We liked his spirit, and he told us it was ready to go on the market that week as is. Within days, he arranged an Open House weekend, and within hours he called to say we sold the house! That's when the real excitement began.
Mom and Dad decided to rent for the rest of our time in Ohio. Deciding where to live required many trips. We visited apartments closer to Dad's office, looked at condos elsewhere in Dublin and neighboring towns. We even visited houses for rent. I was involved every step of the way. In fact, for several weeks, I refused to enter any of the places we visited. I had my reasons. Smells, mostly, told me to stay away. Appearance, too. Mom and Dad were unimpressed by the places, too, so the inspection team was in full accord as we continued the search.
One day, we visited a beautiful condominium thirty minutes north of Dublin in Delaware, Ohio. Most of the residents of the development were older than Dad, so we knew it would be quiet. The condo had high ceilings like our house, a gas fireplace, a strategically placed window overlooking the entrance drive, a two-car garage, and a sunroom. But I didn't know about those features until I went inside, and the only reason I entered was I sensed that some of the previous occupants had been dogs. A pair of Chihuahuas, in fact, as we found out later. Mom and Dad correctly interpreted my action as approval, and we checked the neighborhood out and gave it an A+ for walking potential and parks.
Six weeks of high anxiety followed. Furniture disappeared. Dishes got wrapped in clothes and packed. Though we'd settled on the Delaware condo as our first choice, we couldn't pull the trigger on it because we ran into a problem with the buyers. Their home inspector tried to fleece us with a larded inspection report, a gimmick our realtor had seen before. So, except for one request related to a zoning change, we told the buyers to put the other requests 'where the sun doesn't shine'! Convinced they'd walk away from the deal based on their realtors response, we visited other apartments and condos to generate a fallback option should the Delaware condo come off the market.
Then one day in May the clouds dispersed, and the sun shined on our lives again. The buyers called to say there was some kind of misunderstanding. That despite the weasel words from their rep, they were all in on the deal. And then Dad called from Alabama, where he was attending a Honda event. The Delaware condo was ours, and we'd move there in early June, a day after the house closing. Our garage sale, delayed by rain for several consecutive weekends, finally happened. In early June, the movers came. After unloading everything at the condo, we returned to Dublin for several hours of final housecleaning. We left late that night and never went back.
Dad tells me he's revisited places he lived in as a kid. Mom, too. But this time, they didn't want to go back after moving away. They say they wanted to rely on their memories and on photos, and build new memories in the condo. I think that was a good idea, and the last photo in today's deck is how I remember our house in Dublin. The wonderful green grass and beautiful flowers of early spring 2017. My vibrant realm forever and ever.
Come back next week for another tale, and thanks for visiting my blog.
Tango 🐾
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