It’s like a little chunk of family history coming to an end. Last night the sale went through on Grandma’s house and sixty-plus years of the little island of refuge and stability amidst the bustle of the city passes into a memory. Grandma, of course, is happily getting settled in her new home at the retirement community where she gets to live like she’s on vacation: buffet meals every day, bingo, cards, and games on the fun-time-deck, and morning exercise classes to keep fit and trim from all the partying. But the little shack — where mom grew up, where we spent countless hours in our youths, being babysat in infancy or came to visit from far away, where we stayed overnight and pined for Santa to arrive, or the tooth fairy to visit, where we crushed ants on the front walk, trailed grandpa around the garden, got in trouble for climbing the apple tree, made sure to check the candy drawer first-thing on every visit and then from where we ventured to the mall or the little little corner store to spend our allowance, or jumped through the little gate in the chain-link fence across the road and walked to the park to play on the playground or toboggan in the winter, where we ate big meals, small meals, stored our junk in between semesters at the university, camped while apartment hunting, even where we brought our friends, spouses, pets, and (for some others) children to have a bit of a haven from the city, where we tended grandma’s garden while she went on week-long trips, came for dinners both formal and informal, played cards, made puzzles, and so many other little bits of our youth both recent and distant — went up for sale and now it’s sold. Life goes on, I guess, but it’s good to look back once in a while and reflect.