The End Of The Beginning...............

Flakes of worn paint on an old porch...the same one I had my first kiss on, and then my first broken heart that I thought would never mend.....A window from a empty room that has been looked through at least a trillion times, with thoughts like, Who's going? Who's coming? And "what in the world are my children doing know"....A rusted washtub hanging on an outside building, that gnarly old walnut tree that we climbed a thousand times...These are the thoughts that kept going through my mind as I walked around my home place one last time....the ones I will hold in my heart....

The walls are empty now in the old house, nothing left but a few odd and ends....After months of agonizing pain for my parents and and all of us, the gas company finally "settled" with them...I promise you, they wont be retiring on a beach somewhere......I made the 475 mile trip once again to help, along with my brothers and sisters in law we packed up what was left of a nine room house and tried to move it into a four room house.....As far as real estate goes in that area pickings are slim.....They do have the potential to build on to the house they are buying, we were just hoping that they could find something and not need to work on it.....

We did managed to laugh at ourselves a little bit...You can't look at your old annuals (especially from the seventies) and take yourself serious.....Who ever came up with the fashion for the decade should be found and punished severely.......Found an old box of eight tracks tapes.....You know those are gonna make a big come back...Right!!!!

And a lot of tears....
I saw my Daddy standing in the yard looking at the house...I went up to him and put my arms around him , he looked at me with tears in his eyes and said, "We had a good run of this ole place didn't we buddy". He put his arm around me and kissed me on top of the head....My heart broke into a thousand pieces....
You may say people move every day, and they do, I did.
But not mountain people, My people.
Especially with family land...
They believe you should be born there and die there....
That is what has made this so hard for my parents..

But the gas company owns it now, and they will put up a gate and bull doze it down, I will need to think long and hard before I make the trip back, to support my parents and stand with my brothers and watch as the old home place is demolished...It will be hard to watch something so special be destroyed by someone who doesn't have a clue how magical the old place was to us..

My grandparents built the house from another old house that was being torn down...So I guess you could say they built an old house out of an older house....I had my brother cut me a piece of the original floor....A beautiful worn piece of chestnut...My husband is going to engraved the word HOME on it for me....I will hang it in my kitchen...

I am going to try to get my own life back on track, I have neglected my family here and they need care too....I just put my Christmas up today, and I have no Christmas shopping done at all....But as I set and reflect on the things that myself and my family have overcome this year, I realize how richly blessed my life is.......I thank God......
I will try to get back on track and stop by my wonderful friends blogs soon....I know I have missed so much...
Still Stressed, But Blessed Beyond Measure
The Queen