Goodbye 228 7th Street, Weatherly, PA

One famous Ferris Bueller once said, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it."

Over the past seven years, I've come to understand the importance of pausing to celebrate life's victories, but also pausing to mourn its losses. This weekend, I paused to mourn and celebrate 228 7th Street in Weatherly, Pennsylvania.

When my Nana bought the house in the 50s, it was only four rooms and half its current size. My grandfather, whom I never met because he passed when my mother was young (but I very much look like), relocated the bathroom and added the car port, their bedroom, and my mother's bedroom in the the decade that followed.

It is the only home my Nana has known since her wedding day, the house my mother grew up in, and being in the woods in a town of maybe 2,000, it was a place of both relaxation and adventure for an inquisitive little girl who preferred dirt and wildlife to video games and dolls.

Since 2009, that little house on the end of 7th Street has been the only place I could go from my childhood where I wasn't a visitor. My parents sold the house that I grew up in after I got married in 2007, and my paternal grandparent's house sold not long after my Pop passed seven years ago.

When I graduated high school, I couldn't leave the Hazleton Area fast enough. I spent the next 14 years moving around Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and New Jersey. I traveled all over the world, from Bermuda to New Mexico to Scotland, but it was comforting to know that a little tan house in a sleepy, once coal boom town was there when I needed a reminder of who I was.

While I wish I could come and go at 228 7th Street for another decade or two, I celebrate that it's been there for the last 32 years, and that I got to say goodbye with my Nana, who turns 92 next month.