Dear future owners of this house,
Welcome to our house. It might be yours now, but it was once and will always be ours as well.
We were the first occupants of the house. We chose the floors and the walls and the kitchen. We chose the finishings. We ran speaker wire (what's that?) and ethernet cable (what's that?) in the walls and never used them. We designed and finished the basement. We paved the driveway and the porch. We planted the lawn and did our best to take care of it. That big tree in front? That was planted as a sapling just after we moved in.
We lived here from 2000 to 2017, and I am writing this letter with less than two weeks left for us in this house.
In 2000, when we moved in, we were a family of four (father, mother and two daughters - 5 and 7). We added a third daughter in 2009 and thus leave as a family of five.
Until this house, none of us had ever lived in one house for longer than five years, so I guess we grew kind of attached to the place.
When we moved in, we were moving from the only house the two older girls had ever known into this big, brand new empty shell. And they weren't happy. There was mud everywhere. A bunch of things were still being finished. We weren't near our ex-neighbours anymore. There wasn't a finished basement for them to play in. Our bedrooms weren't right on top of each other. It was different. It was scary. They (we) loved our old house.
The 7-year-old got the bedroom over the garage. The 5-year-old got the bedroom next to that. Given the luck of the draw, it turned out that the older one got the haunted bedroom. Throughout her years in that bedroom, she'd be visited regularly by a well-dressed spectral gentleman who would hang out in her room during the night. Nice guy, but he'd cause a shrill, middle-of-the-night scream on a fairly regular basis. Our youngest one has spent the last 8 years sleeping in that bedroom and never met him, so I don't expect you will either.
It wasn't long before the two older girls were sleeping in the same bed many nights (in the not-haunted bedroom). And that was fine because it made tucking them in and kissing them goodnight that much more efficient.
They grew up in this house. They learned to ride their bikes in front of it. Every amazing TV moment we shared was in this house. They went from primary school through high school and then off to University here. We ate amazing meals. Had lots and lots and lots of family and friends over. It hosted birthday parties and get-togethers and all sorts of memorable times.
It was right here in this house that the girls greeted our youngest daughter, their sister, and fell in love with her. They helped her learn to walk. They watched mommy (and occasionally daddy) change her diaper. Right there - in the dining room - is where the baby shot a perfectly aimed stream of urine at her mommy's face. And over there - that's where she used to ride the plasma car. Her first steps were in the family room.
In the den, over there near the corner, that's where I lay on the floor with the youngest one on the day her second sister went off to University (the first one had already gone a couple of years earlier). We lay there reading a brand new Toy Story 3 picture book (you know, the one where the kid goes off to College?) One of us had a good cry there - check the hardwood, I bet it's still a little warped.
Over here in the garage, that's where we hosted 16 years worth of amazing Halloween exhibits. It was a witch's dining room a few times, a pumpkin patch, a dungeon, a monster day care, a demon-infested child's bedroom, ... This house was THE house on Halloween. Year after year after year after year our driveway was always full of neighbours chatting, kids trick-or-treating, dogs jumping out of their skin as a spider lunged at them. And dads too.
If you go to the backyard, you might see a little stone sundial that one of the two older girls gave me on Father's Day one year. We plunked it down in the little garden back there and for whatever reason it never moved from the spot. With everything else changing in our lives, that sundial was just always in the same place, tracing out the circles of time.
See the fence on the left? I built that. Me and two neighbours. I'm not a handyman by any means, but we did nice work on it. And had a ball. I hope it's still standing.
I could go on and on and on, but I'll leave you with this: You can rest assured that you're in good hands in this house. It's a happy place. It was owned by happy people and filled with tons of love.
The growth chart on the closet door frame in the bedroom over the garage...that's from our youngest. She's probably off living an amazing life somewhere at the time you're reading this, and those pencil marks might be the only sign that she was ever here, that any of us were... but you should know that each mark represents a moment in time where a mother stood with her beloved daughter and marvelled at how she was growing up.
We all grew up in this house and years from now, if you let us in, we can show you all the other marks of our growth in this place. But the pencil marks on the cupboard frame in that bedroom might be the only messy, human, physical evidence that we were there. If you don't mind, please leave them there so we've always got something of us in that place.
We're moving on now. No regrets. Great times ahead.
We leave this house remembering it as a great house and a great 17 years. I hope the place brings you as much joy as it did for all five of us.
Best,
The original owners of this house
