BOLIVAR AVENUE

My mom called me about a year ago to tell me that she was moving out of the house I had grown up in. I got so angry with her. I shouldn’t have, since I had packed up all of my belongings and moved out to California the year before. But I couldn’t understand why she would move. The duplex on Bolivar Avenue in Milwaukee was supposed to be my home to go back to. All I could think about was going back home to visit during the year and it not feeling the same. I remember all the late Christmas Eve nights when my brother Justin and I would get home from Grandma and Grandpa’s house. We would stay up until the early hours of the next morning, playing in the living room with all of our new gifts. With only the Christmas tree lights on, we’d watch the snow fall outside of our picture window. I used to love the days when it snowed so badly that school would be cancelled. Justin and I would build a tent out of kitchen chairs and blankets and watch Mr. Rogers from inside of it while Mom made us egg salad sandwiches for lunch. We’d walk down the street to Wilson Park and go sledding for hours in funny looking snow-pants, and then walk back home soaking wet, with cold red faces to watch Pee-Wee’s Playhouse. It’s such a bad feeling thinking that someone else will be sitting in that living room this winter. After living in a space that holds so many memories of your life, it almost feels like a violation of your space. A violation of your memories. Because someone new, who will never have any idea of what kind of special things went on inside that apartment, is going to be there living their own life and creating their own memories. That’s life I guess. Everyone moves on, and you can’t always feel bad that things have passed. But Christmas just doesn’t feel the same anymore. Part of it is just getting older. But the warm feeling of my family being together in our home is missing, too. That’s what I want back.