Looking for the next imaginary place

as we start the last final few weeks here.

We're amping up the packing, finding all sorts of memories hidden unexpectedly in corners, in trash bags shoved in the back-beyond of closets, in endless foot high stacks of papers. Every breeze that blows in the window carries a reminder of some long ago day when we chased each other around the tiny tree or sat on the back porch listening to the rain. Every curve in the wall is a place long forgotten - the third step down that was our favorite place for telling secrets (apparently, acoustics was not our best subject at age 8), the hole in the floor between the parlor and sun parlor that we used to think hid a secret room. Random sounds combine into the first songs she taught me to play on the piano, the dripping of the pipes overhead as I played with my dollhouse in our dank dark cellar, the off tempo clock that only half ticked as I spent another lazy afternoon visiting the Green Gables. Even ordinary smells seem to hold extraordinary pockets of memories these days - the brand new tube of Crest toothpaste in the bathroom reveals the Easter eve night we had a sleepover upstairs, and in that moment, I could almost still swear that I'd truly seen the Easter Bunny that night.

Everywhere I look there's another story I'm afraid I'll forget again, another little piece of who we were, here. Then. I tenderly pick up each one, put it in my pocket, my dented and patched up boxes, my recycled Rubbermaid containers, and I wrap them in bubble wrap, cushion them in cotton, do anything I can to make sure that they'll survive the trip.

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Andrew Largeman: You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone.

Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew Largeman: You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day ...one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you, kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.
From the movie Garden State