
My mom decided to move recently. She’d been thinking about it for awhile, but hadn’t planned on doing anything until next year (and between you and me, I wasn’t so sure it was such a good idea). Then things changed. All of a sudden next year became now. The house sold and she had three weeks to sort through and pack the contents of a home she’d lived in for twenty-four years.
And suddenly, I had to say goodbye.
This isn’t my childhood home, where we moved when I was fifteen. My high school days were spent here, and summers home from college. I remember driving out of the driveway for the first time all by myself, newly minted driver’s license in my pocket. There were family fights (there is a patched hole where my brother and I put the door knob though the wall in one of our tussles), and family holidays, and nights spent playing board games in front of the fireplace and listening to jazz on the old record player. There’s also a thicket of ivy where, each morning on my way to school, I used to hide the bicycle helmet my mom made me wear.
And then there is the kitchen.

I hadn’t realized how emotional I would be until I thought about the kitchen. This is where I taught myself to cook. The early lessons took place elsewhere, but this is where I made jam for the first time, and puff pastry, and where I threw my first dinners and brunches and parties. I remember sitting at the kitchen table, paging through an ancient copy of the Joy of Cooking. When I think of home, it is that sun-filled room that I think of most.
They say the kitchen is the heart of the home, and that is particularly true of this one. This was where we hung out—at the worn, round oak table we’d bought years ago at a garage sale. The south side of the kitchen was all glass windows and sliding doors and the light streamed through and when you looked out all you could see was green trees and leafy hillsides. It was an optical illusion, there are plenty of other houses in the neighborhood, but when you look out at the hills, all you see is green.

And then there was the stove. It was an old Wedgewood, gas-fueled and sturdy. The pilot light meant that the top was always a bit warm—the perfect temperature to put dough to rise or butter to slowly melt. On those rare winter storms, you could come in out of the wet and put your cold hands on the stove and feel like it was all going to be okay again.

I’ve never understood electric stoves. What do people do when the power goes out?
For years we said that, when the time eventually came to move, we’d take that stove with us (though honestly, I couldn’t imagine my mom ever not living in that house). My mom said she'd buy a replacement stove to leave behind, although I wasn’t sure that would be necessary. I've been fairly certain that whoever bought the house would tear it down. It was one of few humble houses in a neighborhood that had grown grand around us. I didn’t think anyone would want to live in a cozy house surrounded by a large, overgrown garden. I expected it to be replaced by a mini-mansion, complete with three-car garage, built out to within feet of the property line.
In all the hustle and bustle of a quick sale, the stove was forgotten, and by the time I brought it up it was too late. The stove wasn’t ours anymore. “What would you do with it?” my mom wanted to know. It was impractical—I know that. I’ve already insisted on hanging onto the wood-burning stove from my childhood home (another large, heavy, metal thing I don’t yet have a home to put in), my nostalgia should probably be kept in check.
But oh am I going to miss that stove. Oh do I wish there had been a way to keep it. Even now, the move over and done with, the thought of it brings me to tears. I’ll miss so much about that house (I don’t yet really believe it is gone), but the stove—the thing that could have feasibly been brought with—is the thing I mourn the most.

Though perhaps it is no accident that I fixate on these stoves. When I was a little kid we cooked soup on the wood-fired kitchen stove when the power went out, and got dressed in front of it in the winter when our bedrooms were cold. The old Wedgewood stove warmed my hands and coaxed my bread to rise and put forth the meals we gathered around as I grew to adulthood. They say home is where the heart is, but for me it might just be where the warm stove is.
Now, it’s gone.

The happy note in all this upheaval is that the house is not being torn down (thank you, recession). It’s been bought by a young family who understands its funky charm. They’ll make changes, to be sure, but they like the big yard, they don’t want a mini-mansion. They’re even resurrecting the old coop where we kept chickens when we first moved into the house, they’ve already bought the baby chicks. The wife is an artist and loves the light that floods through the windows. The husband is a local boy who grew up on the coast and played on the same beaches where my brother and I played. There is even a little girl who is going to have my old bedroom. Really, it’s all good.

But oh how sad it makes me, in the midst of all that good. One day, as I was packing, I started scheming on how I might somehow set up my mom and the father of the man who is buying the house (they run in similar circles, have even met once or twice). Perhaps if they started dating, then I’d have an excuse to stop by every once in a while. I don't want to live in the house, but it would be nice to be able to still visit.
Clearly I am going to be one of those people who make pilgrimages back to their childhood home every few years, to drive slowly down the street they grew up on, to try and peer into the yard where they once played.
Clearly I am too nostalgic for my own good.
But oh will I miss that stove.
