Memory Lane

Monday, the 6th, we drove to Sacramento and dropped Bill off at the airport and then continued our drive down to Elk Grove to stay the night with dear friends. The drive was bitter sweet and difficult for me to deal with. I heard on the radio the traffic report and started to cry over the mention of all the busy streets I used to call home. I didn't know that "a disabled car on the Capital City Freeway" could bring tears to ones eyes. It was a blatant reminder of how much I missed Sacramento and the life we had there. Our children were born there, we bought our first home and condo there. We started our marriage there. We both started, what I thought to be our careers, there. We had made lasting friendships there, and probably more telling, it's the last place I was with my mother. Where she played with my children and taught me how to be a mom. When I got to Jennifer's house I offloaded my emotions. 

I met Jen Dresser at California Family Fitness the week Bill was accepted into the USSS academy and after a few brief conversations we forged a wonderful friendship. Her youngest was the same age as Livi. Juliana was one of Livi's first friends and it's always fun to get together with the whole Dresser family. Jeff (husband), is very caring towards me and actually helped a lot mentally when Bill was in training. And their boys, Jeffrey and Jordan are sweethearts. I tease Jen that one day I could definitely see our families joining through Jeffrey and Livi. He's 10 and just as into Livi as she is in him. Jen is pregnant now and due the end of August, so it was fun to see her and her belly. 

We spent the night and went to a water park to play. Most of all just hung out at the house and had great conversation. Visiting with them is a homecoming of sorts. When I met her and her family was when my family had turned down a very different path than ever expected. My mom had just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and Bill was leaving for 7 months. I spent many nights with Jeff and Jen. I remember one particular night... I had just made a humongous apple pie. Bill was gone and I had no one to share the pie with except me and two little ones. (At the time Livi was 3 and Aaron 1.) Jen had called or maybe I called her. I was not feeling very peppy and Jen is never anything but. I think she could tell that I started to cry. I explained my self pity of not having anyone to share my pie with. She did what any good friend would do. "Bring the pie over here, we'll share it with you!" The kids and I ended up spending the night and most of the entire next day with them. This visit, like the ones of the past, was wonderful.

The kids and I took the time to go to my favorite deli, "Mr. Pickles". YUM! We drove to a park that I would take the kids to, ate our sandwiches on the beautiful lush grass and played on the wooden structures there. The kids didn't remember the park in it's entirety but it was good for me. 

Afterwards we went to our house. We still own it but are trying to do a short sale on it. We had had good renters in it since we left Sacramento but the mortgage wasn't being met in full so we had to let them go and put it for sale. It's been 2 months since someone had lived there but 

what I saw was more than I could deal with. I started crying the second I pulled in front of the house. It looked like it was just another abandoned house that plagues cities around the country. We used to pride ourselves that our little house was the best looking on the block. Great landscaping front and back and clean exterior. Not the case anymore. 

The neighbors gave me a hug and said the tenant had done a great job keeping it up... it's amazing what can happen in two months. The inside of the house had a few things happen as a result of renters, nothing too bad. She had left the fridge and other appliances very clean. I was very saddened by the state of our once luscious backyard where Bill and I spent hours working on the esthetics, where both our babies used to run around in their diapers and swing on the swing set.  Later in the week we were able to hire a landscaper to give it a once over, with plans to have a friends kid do low maintenance up keep. I drove back down to leave the payment with our neighbor who had set it up for us. My mind and heart had changed. The landscaper had done a great job. Besides the brown grass it looked pretty normal. 
It's a beautiful house, but it wasn't mine anymore. I had felt sad that Bill and I were never able to really say goodbye together in our home, I had really been struggling with leaving Sacramento. Not anymore. I still miss the friends we have there but something's changed. I'm glad I saw the house in the state that it was. I learned, again, that it's not the house that makes the family or the memories, it's the home and the people that live there. My home, our home is in Las Vegas. This is where our memories now lie; old ones from Sacramento, and the new ones we make everyday.