I was looking forward to Thanksgiving, because it was going to be my first one in two years where I wasn’t working in big-box retail with its day-after-Thanksgiving craziness.  Sometime in the summer my mom had suggested that she and dad come to Indy for Thanksgiving. This was fine, because when two people give you everything in your life, the last thing you want to say is, “Hell-to-the-no. I’m sitting pretty and you’re making the punkin’ pie.”  The least I can do is muster up some stovetop and green bean casserole for the people that have fed me every day for the majority of my life. Then, suddenly, I found myself reading Martha Stewart magazine and DVR’ing Food Network Thanksgiving Specials.  I found myself thinking, “Mmm Cauliflower gratin and white pumpkin tablescapes..it’s a good thing.”   I am seriously contemplating appetizers, and seasonal cocktails. Luckily, the three of us were never big on the whole 20-lb turkey thing.  Probably because the last time my mom prepared a bird I almost became a vegetarian. Regardless, it’s insane domesticity.  The only reason I am blogging and not planning my menu for the umpteenth time is because I’m starving and it would be torture.

Anyway, the next time I will be in Grand Rapids will most likely be Christmas, and what an emotional time that will be.  I guess I can talk about this now, since everyone that needed to know about it, knows about it.  My dad was recently promoted to manage the Indianapolis branch of the firm where he works.  That’s right – my parents will be moving to Indianapolis.  We have not lived in the same city for six years.  I am mainly very excited for them, and only slightly weirded out.  There is another part of me that is sad, but only for selfish reasons. . .

. . .I had always imagined that my parents would be in the big blue house in Rockford.  Even when they talked about selling it, I just assumed that they would always live there, that it would always be “home.”  Despite the various struggles I had trying to make it on my own, I knew that I would never permanently move back into that house.  However, that doesn’t take away the feeling I get just wandering from room to room when I’ve been away from it for months.  Remember when my old room got remodeled and I had a mini-breakdown?  That will be nothing compared to this Christmas, which will most likely be the last Christmas I spend in that house.  As if the pretty lights and shiny ornaments and general holiday cheer weren’t enough, I also have to help my parents by sorting through the storage of MY life.  This will involve sorting through nineteen years of memories, and facing the fact that you actually have to burn that ex-boyfriend box and not schlep it to Indianapolis, you sentimental ninny.

I keep thinking of things that will be different - like visiting Grand Rapids and having to find a place to stay.  I also think of things that I will miss that I never actually do - like seeing a Rockford High School football game (I haven’t been to one since I was in high school.)  In the end, though, everything will be fine and it’ll be fantastic to have my parents nearby.  The end.*

** I seriously could not end this entry.  Nothing I could write would make it sound finished.  All I could manage was The End.  I bet Sylvia Plath never had this problem.