The time is nigh. We close on Friday and will leave this place we've called home for the last six years.

This is hard. So so hard.

I aspire to the ideals of non-attachment and letting go, but I'm nowhere near there just yet. I am working to look forward and to feel the absolute rightness of our plans- I know that we are making a good decision and that over the course of our lives, we'll look back to this as such a good move.

But.

The last of my precious books are packed away or given away and there isn't a single photograph of family or friend upon my walls. I've dismantled the home it took us these years to build and for the first time since moving in, it feels alien and house-like instead of the sanctuary we've known it as. My heart feels just a little broken and these empty walls echo with the memories we've shared here.

The places we live are like brackets around eras in our lives. They become how we recall when this or that happened..

"Remember that guy that lived down the street when we were in that little house in Bryson City?"

"What were those flowers that grew on the vine behind our house in Durham?"

"Where did that table go, the one we both sat and studied at when you were in nursing school and I was in law school...in the dining room in the townhouse in Chapel Hill?"

This home has seen some major changes in our life. It's the first single-family home we ever owned. This is where we lived when we lost Pickle. The only home Tessie's ever known with us. Where I learned to find a balance between work and play and realize that I'd allowed myself to begin to buy into "busy" as a value. It took us a long time to find our community here, and now that we have, it's a community that we treasure deeply.

More than all of that, really, is that this home has been the backdrop of all of our mundane daily comings and goings for the last half-decade. The Friday nights snuggled on the couch by the wood stove watching a movie and eating Desrosiers pizza. The dog-walks around the block. The conversations in bed that ran into the wee hours. The fights. The make-ups. The visits with friends. The cooking together and eating together and laughing together. The friends around the fire-pit. The brushing our teeth. The carrying Tessie up to bed. The quiet early mornings with coffee in bed.

The million and three small moments that make home, home.

I've loved this little home more than anywhere else I've ever lived as an adult. This saying goodbye to it is one of the hardest things I've done in years. I'm fighting the fear of our unknown future, the trepidation of taking steps with unknown consequences. But mostly, I'm just grieving the good-bye and learning how to say hello to this new era at the very same time.

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I thought I'd share a little house tour. The morning I started packing up and dismantling the house, I grabbed my camera and snapped some super-fast shots for myself, just to remember what it was like here in this space when it was our home. I never intended them to be shared and didn't even bother to put the right lens on, so bear with the imperfection...this is just my home as it was, not styled, not photographers perfectly, not even very well color-corrected...