In my 27 years, I have moved something between 10 and 15 times. The first was when I was little, and I don’t remember it. My parents moved from Wyoming back to Connecticut. They did it via cross country road trip (the first of three times I would move across country). I moved from our home when my parents got divorced.

I have dreams about that house sometimes. For all intents and purposes, it holds all of my childhood memories. The woods in the back where my mom put a salt like one year for the deer. Where I could wander for hours and my parents didn’t need to worry anything would happen to me. There was a small pond (giant puddle?) in the back that would dry up in the summer but that I could “ice skate” on in the winter. We were surrounded on three sides by woods that I spent hours upon hours exploring. I lived in two bedrooms in that home. I have happy and sad memories from that home- happy memories of us living as a family, and sad memories of the things that ripped our family apart in the end.

The home that started out red and was gray by the time we moved out holds my memories. I could go on and on about all the things I remember about growing up in that home. If I think hard enough about them, I remember, but I know that if I ever walked back into that home memories would come flooding back.

No home has ever felt like that one. I have lived in many places I called home since them- condos with my mother, apartments with girlfriends, in a room in my father’s house, and apartments with Khalil. None has quite the nostalgia that the home I grew up in holds.

This week we packed up my husband’s childhood home and helped my mother-in-law move into a new home. This move came closest to that move out of my childhood home. Most of Khalil and I’s first memories are from that house. First time hanging out, first kiss, first realization that I was with the man I was going to marry. Some other firsts. But none of my memories compared to the memories my mother in law and husband packed up on Monday.

Our memories come with us. They do not get stuck in homes, or on beaches, or in any specific place. They may feel like that, but they don’t. They live in our hearts, in our skin, in the spaces inside us built for them. They come when we want them to and sometimes when we don’t. Memories are slippery, but precious.

I had my own moments of saying goodbye to the house. It was a home. There were reasons why this move was so hard for everyone- but especially Khalil and his mom. In a way, this was the final close on the chapter of their lives that included his dad and favorite aunt. They had to say goodbye to that time, because the new house will not hold any of those memories.

My heart breaks for them. I know that they will carry their memories with them forever, but I know it is hard to say goodbye to the physical, tangible connections to those memories.