Later today we will close the door at our house for the last time. We’ve gently shut many doors this past month, but this one will be the hardest.

The dry-erase calendar in our kitchen has been counting down the days until we pack up our final belongings and head out of town. Over the last few weeks, a number of activities have been listed on that calendar: Move furniture to storage, Concerts, Birthday parties, the last day of school, Middle Sprout’s fifth grade graduation, end-of-year recital and… Final day.

These events mark the closing of an era, of a year of study, and of a year of life.  They needed to be on my calendar. We are meant to acknowledge and grieve the end of things because how else can we be fully open to the beginning and joy of other things.There are doors closing all over the place, but there are equally as many doors opening. So for the big changes in life, we need to mark them on the calendar.

There are other things, however, and arguably the more important things, that aren’t ever listed on a calendar. These are the moments I’ll miss most.

When you live on a cul-de-sac life happens in impromptu fashion.

Bike gangs emerge, kids gather at the park and kids ask one of my favorite questions: “Can I go see if they can play?”

If it weren’t for the rain outside today, I bet the embers of last night’s cul-de-sac bonfire would still be smoldering in our neighbor’s driveway.

The bonfire, like so many of the other impromptu gatherings that happen in good neighborhoods, was not on the calendar. It came together over the course of the weekend and is the perfect closing for what our time on this street has been.

The night games unfolded in their yard and as the adults stood around chatting, all of the kids, ages 7-17, ran and tagged and fell and laughed. Marshmallows and chocolate melted into sticky gobs and as the eyes of my kids drooped heavily, they resisted going home because they knew what I knew…this was our last impromptu bonfire for a while.

Bonfires were new to me when we moved to the Midwest. We cannot regularly set fire to things in Colorado, so I hadn’t ever really known the power and draw of a good fire. The cul-de-sac bonfires will be among my favorite memories of living here. It’s magical, quite honestly, and the connection and community that can be sparked around a fire pit is hard to replicate somewhere else.

So last night, I walked somberly from across the street knowing it was the last time I would walk home from an impromptu cul-de-sac bonfire. I know full well it is not the last time I will gather with our friends, but I do know our world, and their movement in it, is about to change considerably. We cannot rely on the freedom of proximity and instead of living moments without a calendar we’ll have to more purposefully use the openings in our calendar to plan ahead.

I hadn’t considered the symbolism of the note I am leaving for the new owners of our house. You’ll notice I wrote it on the dry-erase kitchen calendar.

It says: Welcome to your new home. You will be happy here. Please make an effort to get to know the amazing people who are your neighbors. You could not be luckier to have people on this street who care so genuinely about one another. We will miss a lot of things about living here, but most definitely what we will miss the most are our awesome friends and neighbors!

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Copyright 2013  Meagan Frank             Choosing to Grow