Little Boxes

I finally have a second to breathe and I'm trying to write this quickly because if I have learned anything from the three weeks since my boss' departure, it is that free time must be used wisely because you never know when and if you will see it again.

I spent the weekend in New Jersey at my parents new house, and I meant/wanted to blog about that much sooner, but I never had time. And now the thoughts and the feelings have escaped further from how real they felt at first. This is probably a good thing but let it be said, there were tears.

I woke up Saturday morning in quite frankly, the most barren and bright room I've probably ever slept in. I had no idea where I was or why the entire house smelled like new car. It took me a few seconds to realize this is where I will wake up on Christmas morning for probably the next ten or so years. This is where I will spend Thanksgiving and random weekends during the summer, when the city has become insufferable and I need grass and quiet. The room I slept in, known as the "guest bedroom," informally known as "my room," faces due east and therefore is brighter than the face of the sun itself by 7 am, making for sleeping in on the weekends virtually...impossible. My mom is excited about how bright the new house is; her gigantic room is on the opposite side of the house. She doesn't get any morning sun and can therefore out-sleep her daughter. And she did. Both days.

Every time I came in through the front door nothing was as it used to be; the tile is a different color, the walls are all the same shade of boring, the ceilings are like 30 feet tall and my dog's bark echos to an almost ear-piercing degree. Nothing is the same, but yet everything is. The exterior is new, the walls are new, all the windows are thick and actually keep heat IN. The interior is all the same furniture, just rearranged in a new way, a couch in a different room than it used to be, an end table repurposed as a TV stand. It's like a mini condensed version of my old house. Mini. And stale. I want to like it. And I'll learn to. But some small part of me cannot let myself. I equally as much want to hate it for the purpose of hating it, because that is easier. Or maybe because it's not what I've always known; because it smells like new car; because the faucet in the guest bathroom clicks when you turn it on; because the shower head is one of those gigantic wastes water spa-like shower heads; because the driveway is six feet long and flat and there's hardly any room to go sledding; because the back yard isn't fenced in and is roughly the size of my office; because the kitchen has a pantry and a lazy susan; because both my parents now have walk-in closets; because it doesn't feel like mine. Or theirs. Or my brothers. It feels lost in translation, lost in a bright white light, lost in the sameness.