What Once Was

And What Will Now Be

I’ve been missing our old house. The house we outgrew, the one that was too small, only one bathroom, a zero lot line, so close to the neighbors that we could hear their conversations, their toilet flush.

Still, the house was ours. We put so much of ourselves into it, from the delirium of new love to the heartbreak of loss, from tearing out the old kitchen and bathroom to replacing these rooms with something new, something that spoke to the integrity of the house’s 100-year history but felt new.

A house is just a house, and it is also so much more than that. A house, if we’re lucky, can be a sanctuary. A house is stability and security, warmth and comfort. It is also, as a homeowner (something I never thought I would be), an endless list of repairs, projects, close calls. Unforeseen issues can arise at any moment. You open a wall up and never know what you’re going to find, especially a house with the kind of history ours had.

Did that house have history. An archway leading into the living room, original redwood hardwood floors buried underneath decades of linoleum (and nails and staples—so many nails and staples!). Behind old 70s wood paneling was 1920s beadboard; the original hexagon single-pane window in the entryway began to leak and moss started to grow in its crevices. So much charm, so much that needed fixing. But it was ours.

My wife bought our house before we met, had a vision for what it could be that I never would have seen on my own. The mint green house with a red door became the gray house with the yellow door. The fig and olive trees in the backyard, which I would have found charming, became rat havens and were ripped out to make way for a patio. The lack of a garage was remedied with a studio my wife and her sister built before I came on the scene.

So much was done to the doll house before I met my wife, and there was still so much to do after I moved in, so many ways for me to claim the space alongside her, so though it was her house first, it became both of ours. It was our home. The home where we lived as newlyweds and then, as time went on, the place we both lived for the longest amount of time we had ever lived anywhere as adults.

When we first left, I was ready. Ready for more space, for two bathrooms, for a garage and a driveway, ready for the possibilities that space engenders. When we moved into the new house, we were excited, in awe that we would have twice the square footage that we were used to. Then, everything fell apart.

When we moved, we knew that I would need to undergo surgery; we hustled to get the remaining items out of the doll house and into the garage before my biopsy the next day, after which I wouldn’t be able to lift anything heavy. I unloaded the truck as the sky grew dark, no time to say goodbye to the doll house, the only focus being getting it all done before tomorrow.

Though this uncertainty loomed, I was resolved that everything was going to be ok. Things were looking up. Then, shortly after Thanksgiving, we lost someone, and darkness descended. The new house is now the house where everything has gone wrong, where we’ve received bad news and discovered hardships we didn’t know were waiting for us. Good things have happened, like my results coming back clear, but this has all been clouded by loss, by grief.

I’ve found myself missing the old house because that was my home, and my new home doesn’t feel like home yet. It feels like a container for the pain of the last few relentless months. But whether we had moved or not, this bad news would have come for us anyway. It’s just hard to see that when the old comfort is gone and the new space isn’t yet comforting.

The doll house is a symbol of the beforetimes, the time before we knew, before our person was gone. It was tiny but perfect. It is easy to romanticize it now that we are no longer in it, to miss its diminutive size and long backyard, the oak trees where the owls visited, the fence that was a cat highway and occasionally a thoroughfare for a mama possum and her babies. The house where neighbor cats snuck in through the open window to eat our cat’s food (and pee on my clothes!), where you could see hot air balloons going by in the morning sky, a place where we rode out the pandemic, where we laughed and cried in equal measure.

It was time to go, but now that we have gone, it is sad that we left. We drove by the other day and the new owners have already painted it. The mint green house with the red door that became the gray house with the yellow door is now a white house with a green door. It is no longer ours. It is not supposed to be, but seeing it in its new iteration unearthed the grief of leaving it behind. The memories are with me, the good and the bad, but the house will never be what it once was. It isn’t ours anymore.

. . .

Change is inevitable, and yet it always rocks us to our cores; the bottom drops out and we are left bewildered, wondering how the hell we got here. And without the comfort of the home we had, change feels all the more disorienting. Four walls are just four walls, but they also help to keep us rooted as the world around us becomes increasingly baffling.

The United States is at war with Iran; Mexico’s cartel boss has been killed; powerful men are stepping down as their names are revealed in the Epstein files; young American women did things their own way and went on to win gold in the 2026 Olympics; this is what is happening right now. The order of things is falling apart and being remade in real time, terror and joy unfolding simultaneously.

There is so much to be afraid of, so much to mourn and rail against. Our anger is righteous, our disorientation by design. But I believe, more than ever, that we will find our way through. That we will create something new, something beautiful. As the late Jesse Jackson said, we must keep hope alive.

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The Finds

Action. Contact your members of Congress and demand they stop the war in Iran and stop ICE’s reign of terror.

Listen. “But There’s Still the Moon” by Tasha.

But I still try

to bare it through the bad weather

Winter’s harsh sting

so unforgiving

Inside hiding

it’s okay, don’t want to be seen

But there’s still the moon

and I still really love the color blue

Watch. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast on Netflix! From the creator of Derry Girls, How to Get to Heaven is a fantastically unhinged feminist romp that offers laughs, bewilderment, and a whole lot of heart. Part mystery, part dark comedy, part poignant meditation on friendship, this limited series is as entertaining as it is original. Fresh and entertaining as hell.

Read. Like Family by Erin O. White. White, a 51-year-old debut novelist, has written a gift of a book. Following three middle-aged couples living in the idyllic town of Radclyffe, New York, Like Family is my favorite kind of novel, a like-life story where the characters feel like real people, the dialogue sounds effortless and genuine, where mistakes are made and all kinds of imperfections are displayed, but you still find yourself rooting for everyone. Beautiful!

Thank you for being here.

In solidarity,

Emma