My Treehouse.

You have two weeks left.

This is what you know - even if you still don't quite believe it, can't completely wrap your heart around it.

Your head understands the reality. Movers will arrive on the afternoon of August 30th. They will sweep through your treehouse, they will load and carry in a whirlwind.  You know exactly how it will go, you can see it all in your minds eye. You'll be amazed by the dust bunnies that appear when the bed is removed.  You'll discover long lost items (a solo earring, an old cat toy) hidden behind dressers and bookcases.  The movers will work quickly and efficiently, chattering back and forth to one another in their native Portuguese.  They helped you move in to #3L ten years ago, they will help you move out.  It's a job to them, another on their list of many this time of year, where efficiency and speed will matter.  They won't linger. They will leave as quickly as they arrived, the moving truck loaded, and you will be the one to walk through the empty rooms -the empty rooms of your beloved, beautiful, creaky, charming treehouse.  You'll marvel again (you marvel daily) at how the light shines through the whole place, how the magic hour bathes each room in gold.  You'll step out onto the newly empty porch and watch the sunset. You are sure you will cry.  

So, yes. Your head understands these logistics, the looming reality.  Your brain has lined up the movers, is working hard to purge the piles of items (so many piles) that have grown over ten years of calling one address home. Your mind looks at to-do lists and dates and makes more to-do lists.  It may not like this reality very much but it's doing it; your head knows that it has to.

But your heart.  

Oh. 

My heart.

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I can recall a time years ago, way back before I knew I would eventually lose my treehouse, walking down my quiet little street one night after work and taking in my neighborhood in a swell of gratitude that nearly brought me to joyful tears.  How lucky I was to find this place, how grateful I was to call it my home. It was this memory that came rushing back to me last June, on the morning I learned I would be forced to move, along with the resolute knowledge that I had never taken 29 Tremont for granted, not once.  

(Occasionally, over the course of this last year that I have been lucky enough to still call my treehouse home, I find myself thinking, as I look out at the lights of Fenway from my bedroom window or I watch the snow fall from my living room, that no one will ever love this apartment the way I do, it's impossible.)

(No one will.  No one could.)

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There was a time throughout my twenties when I moved every year.  I knew movers on a first name basis, I kept a file of all the needed phone numbers of businesses, ones I'd only just called a few months prior to set up or cancel service at my last apartment.  A checklist was tucked into my planner - cable, electric, post office - that I consulted often.  In a sense, I had moving down to a science. 

And then I landed in my treehouse.

It was a wonderful, fortunate break to find this little apartment of mine more than ten years ago.  I knew it then and I know it now. (I will always know it.)

Like it was yesterday, I can picture a moment when I stood in the shower in my treehouse, wondering how long my current bottle of shampoo would last, deciding if it would or would not make the "moving cut" - will I need to pack it or not? - when it hit me that I would not need to pack up box after box this year. After five moves in six years, there suddenly was no deadline, no end date to my stay.  I paid my rent meticulously, I fixed up those three little ugly duckling rooms that made up my one bedroom and turned them into swans.  A good and responsible tenant I figured that if I kept my landlords happy I could stay forever. The price was right, the location ideal, and most of all, it felt like home.  

I was finally home.  

And so, my treehouse and I got to know one another.  I fell in love with how the light moved across each room, waking me in the morning and winding its way through the day around the building, into the living room, then the kitchen, sunsets to be watched from my porch.  I learned how the daylight shifted as the seasons shifted, I watched my neighbor's garden grow from my kitchen windows, I took my very first stab at a container garden growing my own herbs and tomatoes, joyfully selecting new flowers to try each season, ambitiously attempting a few things every spring that probably needed more than just a pot to bloom.  The tricks and secrets of this apartment became completely and only mine.  I discovered where the door sticks and which part of the bedroom floor squeaks the loudest. I know that the floor is crooked; though I've always been charmed rather than frustrated when I spill water and it trickles across my gray kitchen floor.  I'm aware that the windows are drafty, the heat works only when it feels like working, the wiring is old and temperamental.  

Someone could look at my place and likely see 1,000 things that are wrong with it.  I look at my treehouse and see 100,000 things that are right with it, that are to me, perfect.

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Oh, these walls of my treehouse.  What they know!  What they will always know. 

They have seen me laugh, cry, worry, delight.  They've witnessed parties and book clubs and sleepovers and out of town guests. They have seen late nights after cocktails out with friends, they have watched me study hard and focused as I worked through business school.  They've heard me cry when life didn't go the way I was sure it should, they've seen me leap at wonderful news. These walls have witnessed friendships bloom (such beautiful dear friends) they've seen boyfriends come and go.  They've caught me when I've worked on headstands after yoga class, they've kept me warm and dry and have heard my secrets, my hopes, my struggles, my dreams, my joys.   

My treehouse has held me up when I was my happiest and supported me with its comforting familiarity when I've been at my saddest.     

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When I moved in July of 2008 I was 28 years old.  My mother helped me scrub that little place upwards and backwards and we painted every inch of ceilings and walls.  My father helped me hang blinds and curtains and pictures and hooks.  He patiently assembled multiple JC Penny and Ikea furniture pieces while sitting on that crooked kitchen floor.  Both of my sweet cats lived out the rest of their lives in our treehouse, my brother came to visit with the woman who would become his wife. I remember thinking, after all was said and done and I was unpacked and settled, that I could finally do it.  I could finally stay in one spot; a place I could afford, in a neighborhood I loved, where I could build my life, live out the next chapter - the end of my twenties and ushering in my thirties.   
This apartment, this house, this home, my treehouse, has been my constant, my member of the family for ten years and one month.

I would stay here forever if I could.

But we know.  You know.  Nothing lasts forever. 

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Each night, when I crawl into bed, before I close my eyes, I look out my bedroom windows and reflect on my day, mentally writing a list of the good of the day - the things, the moments, the people for which I am grateful.  I watch for the moon if it's full, I peek through the leaves when the tree outside is in bloom, I look across the way at my neighbors strung up Christmas lights during the holidays, I watch the streetlamp during snowfall, mesmerized by how fast the snow is falling.  I listen to the creeks and pops of my treehouse as it settles itself for the evening. Another day is done and I am tucked up in my cozy nest.

So it will go for two more precious gifted weeks.  I will memorize cracks and marks and shapes and sounds.  I will do my best to commit to memory what it has meant to live here, what this beloved treehouse has given me, what it has meant to call 29 Tremont home for a decade of my life.