Going ...to.. Oakville.

For the longest time, the words "going to Oakville" just sounded so natural coming from anyone's lips in my family. We would always refer to my grandparent's house as "oakville" and it would be THE place to go whenever the spare moment because it was a second home to all of us. My grandparent's house is where I know all the good hiding spaces, it's where I slept over many summers and stuffed myself with junky food, it's where money DOES grow on trees and where I was encouraged to stay up late. It's where I spent my childhood and also grew up. "Everything here belongs to you" my grandma would always tell me. It's where I plotted to run away to whenever my mom was mean to me.

But now "going to Oakville" has become a whole lot more complicated. My grandparents have moved house and left their old house behind to my aunt, uncle and cousins. It's all a little emotional for me because I love that house like anything. I have so so many good memories there and I feel like they're being picked apart as fast as the furniture is being rearranged. It's kind of like losing a really good friend.

My grandparent's new house is still in Oakville but a lot further now. It's on the border of Oakville and Burlington and that makes it 20 minutes longer from their old house making the drive even longer for us from Brampton. Who wants to drive 40 minutes when 20 was just right. The new house is cute but I feel no attachment to it. It's brand new, actually the whole neighbourhood is, so I don't really know where anything is. It feels odd with no park across the street. It feels odd to walk up the front walk and not see the heart shaped bush that my grandma was always so proud of. It feels odd looking out the back door and not seeing a backyard that is five times the size of my own and further back a beautiful forest but instead now seeing glimpses of the highway. With the open concept design of this house I feel like there's no privacy. It's small whereas the old house was huge. The basement isn't finished yet and I'm scared to touch the clean white walls. There's no good hiding spots in case the house is invaded by killers and I haven't plotted a good fire escape from the upstairs rooms yet. It doesn't have my initals carved somewhere on a wall in each room of the house and it doesn't have the glue spot on the living room table that can never be removed. There IS no living room table yet. This house doesn't speak to me. I just don't feel like it's my home.

I'm not good at accepting change. What do I say now when we're heading there, "going to the new Oakville"? The old "Oakville" still exists, I just wish it had been my aunt, uncle and cousins to move out instead..

So we went there today.. but it just didn't feel right. Even my grandma's food tasted different (but maybe that's because I have a sore throat). In other news I beat my cousins and sisters in Monopoly.. for the first time ever I think.