Now those were the days.

With our dad’s favorite smooth soul music playing endlessly on the speakers, Lacy, Ryan, and I squealed as we splashed around in our plastic, blue kiddie pool. The chemical smell of heat on plastic permeated the thick, humid air, and we sneezed every time we got water up our little noses. 

At twilight, with the weight of the lowering sun heavy on the ground, our light toes frolicked on the dewy, cold grass of our front yard. We would catch fireflies in our clammy hands until stars showed up in the sky. When we finally wore ourselves out, gravity collapsed us into the grass as we sunk down, all 100 pounds of us three combined, and we gazed up into the midnight blue of the sky, innocent and happy.

During wintertime, snowflakes would drop down in heaps, covering our entire backyard in a mattress pad of snow. We laughed at the top of our lungs as we rode our plastic red sled downhill, and then ran back to the top to do it all over again.

For dinner we would go to our favorite Chinese restaurant, The Far East. Hot, savory dishes of Mongolian beef, Szechuan chicken, honey garlic shrimp, and mountains of Peking duck warmed our bellies as our parents asked us endless questions and beamed at our innocent replies. Everything about that restaurant was like a cozy hug.

Time drudged on, unhurriedly. The hours of our youth seemed as long as the drawn out beats of the soul music that was always humming on. And that’s how I remember that chapter of our lives.

Slow. Light. Easy.

Maryland.

That was the chapter before the big move to Florida. Before any effort of living the good life was required. Before I was shaken out of the dream and into reality.

It was a seemingly typical Sunday afternoon in the spring of 6th grade. I was watching Full House with Lacy and Ryan in our “play room,” giggling at the episode when Jesse and his family go to Tokyo, when Lacy got up to bring us some Cheetos from the kitchen. She overheard our parents talking on the other side of the basement door about something that caught her attention, so she pressed her ear against it to listen closer.

Ryan and I were immersed in cackling at our favorite “honey-roasted peanuts” scene, when she purposefully stomped back to us and stared with a dark expression, instantly turning the giddy mood on its head. She put bluntly, “Mom and Dad are talking about us moving to Florida.”

No. I must have heard her wrong. From my 11 years of existence, I knew all about life. I knew there would be a utopian life in Maryland stretched out before me. Mom and Dad couldn’t just superimpose a brand new plan on top of that. They wouldn’t do that. That wasn’t how things worked, right?

And then the possibility of this sunk in some more. In some kind of obscure horror sequence, we confronted Mom and Dad about the truth of this proposition, and they confirmed it. At that moment, everything went dark. I paced away with my hands on top of my head, feeling the weight of my entire life slam down on me like a sledgehammer. I felt so heavy that I would just collapse into the ground. I yelled out as tears burst out of my eyes like a floodgate. This girl could not possibly be me. And this was not happening.

Leaving home is like closing your favorite storybook and opening up to a new book, that theoretically, you should be eager to fill with new words and photographs. But the original storybook, your favorite thing in the whole wide world, tries with all its might to pull you back into it, not wanting you to leave. You were the main character after all; what would it do without its protagonist? It doesn’t want to share you with another story. You weren’t supposed to pack your bags and leave.

But that summer, according to Mom and Dad, it was time for a new story.

I went to school the next day with my eyes so puffy that my eyelid creases completely disappeared. I didn’t even look like myself, or feel like myself, for that matter. Mr. Fink, my evil, greasy-haired, sweaty band teacher asked me, in front of the class, if I was okay. Trying to hold back the floodgate of tears, that somehow was still maintaining functionality after last night’s disaster, I stared into the dead eyes of his pudgy face and declared, “Yes.”

That was one of about three times in my life that I’ve lied.

The remaining schoolyear passed by me in a daze as I repeatedly repressed the thoughts that my days in Maryland were being numbered. I slammed down on my alarm clock each morning, blinking my eyes open while praying that my dreams were real and this reality wasn’t. I let myself become numb to the pain of leaving home, because staring it right in the face seemed to me to be the worst thing I could do.

And then the day was here; it was time to say goodbye to my home. I broke down numerous times over the previous months, but I made a pact with myself that this day would be different. Today, I would not allow myself to cry. I owed it to 20504 Farcroft Lane to make our final occasion together a special one- not one where I howled in agony the entire time.

I began my farewell. I thanked my canary yellow room (with multicolored polka dots that I added so I could feel more “grown-up,” once I hit ten years old) for watching over my little self at night and protecting me from bed bugs. I walked down the cream-carpeted stairs and laughed to myself as I remembered when my siblings and I used to slide down them with sleeping bags. My feet creaked on the shiny hardwood floors as I could almost hear the pitter patter of our toddler feet when we were first learning how to walk. 

I glanced at the mauve-colored, almost blindingly-lit living room, remembering the hours of Barney we used to watch in there and the silly dance performances to “Are You Jimmy Ray?” we entertained our parents with. I walked through the living room, remembering the millions of times Saba would light the Shabbat candles for us and sing the blessing over the challah with his low, wholesome voice. Getting closer to the door, I walked through the kitchen, smiling at the times us three kids played “Iron Chef,” with Mom as the judge for our bizarre concoctions.

And then I made it to the lavender-scented laundry room, where I took the final step out of my one and only home. I tried lifting up my chest, but it was heavy.

My heart was full.

The sunlight took me in with a hug and I looked out across the green hills, quiet homes, and paved roads of my neighborhood. My home. The sky was as blue as could be, and the air was crisp and clear. If an unknown voice could be felt, then that’s what happened to me. 

“All is exactly as it should be.”

This tickled my fingertips and raced all through me.

And twelve-year-old Tori opened up her full heart to what would be in store, eager to fill up her new story.