Any change, no matter how positive it may ultimately prove to be, sets us grieving for what was.  We are such creatures of habit and we crave routine and “knowing”.  We stress when our world as we think it is or should have been is turned upside down.  Shifting gears from familiarity and safety is hard.  Stepping out of comfort zones isn’t always so comfortable…

We are sad when a dream ends.

Today we got an email from our realtor – a triumphant tone – “Your house is “live” – it’s listed and you already have a showing for tomorrow afternoon!!!”  We eagerly open up the link to view our listing in MLS…

and I burst into tears…

I wasn’t expecting to…rationally I know that it makes sense to sell and save for our future…but…

I Loved That House.

I fell in love with it nearly 8 years ago… the thought of it holds so many lovely memories… it’s just so beautiful and unique and peaceful… It was exactly the right house and community for us and came along at exactly the right time… living out on the 4th line was very isolating and I spent the better part of Mansell’s JK year searching the Hillsdale village for available properties so we could move closer to the school and community… I’m so glad, that on his last day of JK, a “For Sale” sign went up – that was a Thursday – and by Sunday it was ours.  I just KNEW it was the house for us.

We enjoyed every season there… Hudson was just 13 months old when we moved in and I have the most beautiful photo of him in his little khaki Osh-Kosh overalls standing beside the yellow fall mum planters, which were about as high as he was!  And all the photos of kids playing in giant piles of vibrant fall leaves… and Daddy chopping bush cords and cords of wood to feed our woodstove that kept us warm in the winter, the kids climbing over the logs and pushing wheel barrels full of wood to be stacked…  and awesome Halloween displays of carved pumpkins and costumes… I always stayed home and “shelled out” while Aaron took our over-the-moon-excited kids out to trick-or-treat.  The community kids would always arrive at the door in a chorus of “Hi Mrs. Styles!!”…I loved seeing them in their creative little costumes! … and Sandra who is not only a friend, but a talented photographer, who did a fall photo shoot with us every year on that lovely property…

What a gorgeous Christmas house… an old Victorian… (A woman who visited to purchase something we had listed on Kiji noted when I opened the door, “Oh, you live in a gingerbread house”!) Christmas was such a magical time… the house had the original banister (circa 1890) and the kids loved to hang garland, and sometimes lights, (and sometimes themselves – Mansell’s heel’s can still attest to the “success” of the latter…) from it.  Hanging stockings for Santa to fill… even stockings for our many four-legged creatures (we brought Rosie home here as a brand new puppy to join Simba and Nala and acquired Butterscotch (a happy accident) for a total of four furry friends!)  was a dear tradition …one of many favourite Christmas’s was the year we hosted 30+ for the Styles/Mackay etc. gathering, having just “finished” (for the most part) our renovation… and Swedish smorgasbord every Christmas Eve with Nana and Grampa… making homemade perogies together and SO much baking in the kitchen with the kids… hosting our annual New Year’s Eve “tree-burning” party each year.  I’ll never forget the year we were short a few trees and took all the giggling kids through the neighbourhood in hopes that someone had already taken down their tree – we were in luck and two Mom’s and 6 kids dragged another tree from the ditch across the snowy streets and along the snowier sidewalk back to the bonfire for burning!  And lots of pots and pans banging!!!  Our avid skiers loved that skiing was literally a few minutes away… Horseshoe is where the kids and I learned to ski and honestly I had to work really hard to like throwing myself down a very big, slippery (often icy) hill with two steel planks designed to go FAST on said slippery (icy) hill attached to my feet.  Not sure I’ve ever prayed more in my life than I did when I was hurtling down those hills, praying not to break myself.  The rest of the family are ski-nuts, and I wanted to be included, so made myself do it!  (I DID really enjoy the lift ride to the top – so peaceful and pretty floating above the trees…)  And how kind Aaron was to me on the kids’ lesson night – while they went off with their instructors, we would do two, maybe three runs and then be “cold” and go in for a drink!  Now THAT’s skiing I can tuck into!

After excruciatingly long winters, the beauty of spring delivered hundreds of tulips and hyacinth poking up through the raw ground as it warmed, giving such a lovely scent and the beginning of cut flowers for the whole season – peonies (one of my favourites!) and hydrangeas (my favourite summer flower – we planted a couple of new plants each year to transform the front garden into a hydrangea wonderland!) and a few summers of gladiolas that we planted in a cut-flower section in the garden.  Amazing all the work we did to plant and maintain a 1000 square foot garden – we had fresh veggies and herbs throughout the summer and canned green and yellow bush beans, pickles, oodles of tomatoes became pasta sauce and salsa, made umpteen loaves of zucchini bread and chocolate zucchini muffins, squash, relishes, chutneys, jams and jellies… the kids were my little helpers, weeding, harvesting, washing and preserving…  We poured our hearts and dimes into that extensive renovation – many lovely and tough memories tied to that adventure… and such a sense of accomplishment as we did so much of it ourselves… and with Aaron commuting to Toronto everyday, it took us a while to see proof of that accomplishment…  I could walk to work and stay as late as I needed, prepping for classes and connecting with my dear, dear teacher friend Lauren… we supported each other through a lot… and the kids love her as much as I do!  Being a teacher at the kids’ school was a perfect transition back to work and I’m thankful for the learning and experience I gained at HES.

Of course it wasn’t all rosy and I would be remiss to exempt the challenges faced by any family as they move through life. However, this is not novel to us and not worth dredging up – what is done is done.  As this is a bit of a tribute to our time in Hillsdale, I will simply say, that the memories, good and challenging, are many.

The Faris Team did a fantastic job of showing our house off in the listing … the EK Construction team did a great job of finishing off what we had started, to make it show ready… however…

The life has gone out of it…

It doesn’t look like our home anymore… it is a building, a lovely structure… and hopefully it inspires another family’s imagination the way it did ours…

Our new home here in Mexico is so appealing because of the possibility it holds… for memories of all colours to unfold… for those we love to be hosted there… for new friends to share our table…

Here’s to new possibilities and new dreams…