The Kitchen Pig's Legacy

This is my kitchen pig. Driving home with him wrapped in bubble wrap in my backseat made me cry.

Some elaboration might be necessary. When I was a senior in high school my maternal grandparents moved down south. They sold the house that I lived in for the first five years of my life. The one that our home videos are filmed in. The one I unsuccessfully attempted to ride a purple bicycle in front of. The one I am in when I think of my first memories as a human. No more sliding glass doors to the porch where the toys and pool table were kept. No more dropping toys down the laundry shoot to the basement. No more Christmas eve packed with my crazy family and being entranced by Memere's glass bubblers (these) on the Christmas tree. It was awful. I remember how ridiculous it felt to be 17 years old and crying in the bathroom because my grandparents were moving away. Sure, we were all older and busier and we hadn't been over quite as often as when we were younger, but I still needed them and I wanted that house. Christmas eve was never the same after that. Neither was Thanksgiving, Easter, or weekly family dinners. But, things change and you get used to them over time.

Now, seven years later, my dad's parents are moving down south as well. They're selling the house I've spent every Christmas day in since I was born. The one they bought when they moved here from England when my dad was six years old. I won't ever have a Christmas day that includes walking into their living room and finding half my family watching Monty Python again. My grandparents told us that they were selling everything in the house and that we should take a look and put a post-it note on anything we wanted. Everything I wanted was impossible to take. The only things that had good memories for me were things like the slanted floors in the kitchen that my cousins and I used to roll marbles on when we were little. So I settled on the kitchen pig. This antique pig head has hung by the sink in my grandparents kitchen for as long as I can remember. I'm so happy that I have him. My dad said it was a good choice because it reminded him of that house, too. I couldn't stand to wrap him in a box and put him into storage for when we find a house, so my mom put him in our kitchen for now. He doesn't look the same. He looks smaller and not as special.

Growing up is hard. The magic of holiday's change. But the memories stick around. Losing those houses is the hardest part. I have a big family on both sides. Lots of aunts and uncles and tons of cousins. Now that those cousins are getting older and having children it seems like the aunts and uncles are breaking off and doing their own holidays with their own individual families. We lost the glue that made us all come together for holidays. Right now Thanksgiving and Christmas are both up in the air. We don't know what we will be doing or who will be free to celebrate with us. It sucks. Christopher goes home for holidays. I can't leave my parents and brother to be with him and his family, and really, I don't want to anyway.

So, the kitchen pig is making me cry. I'm hoping that one day he will be in my kitchen on Christmas day and the holidays will feel a little bit more like the way they did when I was younger. But, maybe those days have just passed and I need to let them go.

Growing up is overrated.