My daughter Lucy declared last week that as of May 16th, we would be “a fishly” moved into our new house. That day has passed and I’m happy to say that I’m writing this blog from our new kitchen. We spent all of Saturday moving boxes and furniture and most of Sunday wondering where all these scrapes and bruises came from. Are we the only ones who look like we’ve been in a prize-fight after moving-day?

Now we start the process of discovering our new home and finding out her dirty little secrets. The first one we found was a note with pool instructions that was taped over a giant hole in the wall. That wasn’t found until my husband took the note down Saturday to read it. There are fun things to be discovered, like the frogs outside our bedroom window who chirp at night, and the not-so-fun things, like the garage.

No one likes to think about cleaning out their garage because it’s essentially where things go to die. You put the stuff you don’t need out there, thinking that you’ll deal with it at a later date. The reality is that it’s going to sit there and slowly decompose until it leaves a gross ring on the floor. One day you open your garage and it’s filled with so much crap that you can’t IMAGINE ever emptying it but that day always comes. The man we bought our house from must have opened his garage door, uttered an obscenity, then closed it forever because all of HIS CRAP is still in there. Now we have to unload all of his garage-crap before we unpack OUR garage-crap because yes, we brought ours. Yesterday, I discovered a door in our garage that leads to yet ANOTHER room filled Home Depot supplies. It gave me a mild anxiety attact until I remembered that the garage is my husband’s domain. I’ll let him deal with it while I unpack endless boxes.

I was taking the trash out when I discovered something else the previous owners left behind. They had poured new concrete in the driveway years ago, then each family member had written their name and left a handprint in it. It was such a happy little reminder of the life that was here before us, but divorce had split them up. How did something that was once so bright and filled with promise, end up living separate lives? What had come between them?

I’m a product of divorce so I know that sometimes a rift isn’t caused by one BIG thing. Sometimes it’s years and years of little things that people find they can no longer ignore. It’s none of my business anyhow but whatever came between the people in this house, I hope I can protect my own family from it. I also hope that, unlike the crap in the garage, it’s not something they left behind.