Last Night

Tonight will be our last night in the house that we've called home for the past 15+ months. It's funny to me to think back on the several places I've lived in the past 8 years since graduating high school. I have not spent any more than 24 months in one single place, and I spent as little as a few weeks in a few places, but they all seem to be about the same...looking back, it feels like every one was just a very short amount of time.

It doesn't feel like I spent two entire semesters living with my roommate Adam in Nyack. Our room was small and cramped, and fun. My mom called Adam a "hooligan" 'cause he was one of those freshman who was always out late, usually up to some kind of prank or something no good. I was almost always in bed by 12. It feels like it was just a few weeks...

It doesn't feel like I spent an entire 4 months living with Courtney (I'd never met a guy named Courtney before) and Ben in Wake Forrest. Of course, that makes a little more sense because I traveled home EVERY SINGLE weekend that semester. All I really remember from that apartment was eating lots of noodles and trying to figure out how to make Tricia fall in love with me...

I doesn't feel like I spent an entire year at home with my parents, the first half trying to convince Tricia to give me a chance, and the second half trying to figure out what God wanted with my life. That was an interesting year...

It doesn't feel like I spent an entire semester living with some family friends, the Blokers (took me a few minutes to remember the name) in their guest bedroom. All I can remember is being really lonely and spending lots of time playing ping pong with Skip.

It doesn't feel like I spent an entire school year living with Brian (can't remember his last name) in his apartment. I actually probably spent just as much awake time over at Tricia's apartment, so it makes sense that I don't remember. I remember more from this time than the others before, but that will probably fade as I get further away from it.

I barely remember spending a few nights on the Nylander's couch, looking for a roommate at the beginning of the next school semester. I seriously can't remember if it was just a few nights or a few weeks... I can't remember taking any showers, eating any food (although I know I did those things...), doing anything but sleeping on their couch...

It doesn't feel like I spent almost a year with my best man, Juan in our rented apartment. Although at the time it felt like an eternity because Tricia and I were engaged, it now feels like it was no more than a few short months. We had no kitchen urniture and a landlord that had a Boston/Irish accent...that was cool.

It doesn't feel like Tricia and I spent nearly two whole years renting my parents apartment in Portsmouth. We loved just everything about that apartment, and we would have been happy there for a lot longer if we hadn't moved to another state. I have lots of memories there, but it still only feels like much less than two years looking back.

And now, have we really been in Nags Head for this long? Two whole summers? I didn't use the outside shower as much as I should have... I literally feels like we moved in this June and not last June.

I think about all of the number of times I pulled into each one of those driveways and parking lots, the number of showers in each of these places, the number of meals I "cooked" and friends I had over...I know that there were lots of those things, and it feels like it should feel differently, I just can't remember most of them.

Oh well...my guess is, this next part of our lives - driving back and forth to Durham for who knows how long and splitting time between my parent's house and our Residence Inn - will also be a blur at some point in my life.

By my estimation, we've put on about 4,500 miles between Nags Head and Durham, I've spent about 6 hours of my life driving back and forth to the Center For Living to drop and pick Tricia up from PT, I've eaten at about half of the restaurants in Durham, and I've spent several hundred hours on this computer working and blogging and staying in touch with the real world...

Nate