A Moment of Closure |

By Laura Fischer
December 28, 2013

My grandparents’ house has been in the family for generations. Every Christmas that I’ve been alive, we’ve gone back there to Roanoke, Illinois, where my parents grew up, met, and were married, to celebrate the holidays with my mom’s side of the family. We also visit frequently on other occasions, and when I was a kid I got to travel out there for summer visits for two weeks at a time. It’s a rambling old farmhouse, not without its problems, but roomy and comfortable and saturated with memories of fun and family.

Not long ago, my grandparents sold that house. They’re moving into a condo in the town, where they won’t have to deal with all the issues of owning a country property with a huge yard and the remnants of old outbuildings. It’s a good move for them, and I know they’ll be comfortable and happy in their new home. I look forward to visiting them there, just like I’ve always looked forward to visiting them.

But I’ll miss the old house. This last weekend, my family went out to Illinois for one more visit. Many items had already been moved out of the house, but it still felt the same as always, warm and welcoming and home.

I all but binged on memories, just taking a casual look around. The bed in the kids’ room where a cat had given birth to three kittens in the lining underneath while my brother slept on the mattress. The kitchen where I used to listen to Paul Harvey while my grandmother washed dishes and did the laundry. The porch where, as a very little girl, I had dragged out my mother’s old dolls to play. The living room where I always read the Sunday comics, dressed in my Sunday best with my stiff, shiny shoes creaking on the floor, while waiting to leave for church. The old books and games and toys that my mother and her sister and brother used to play with, followed by me and my seven siblings, my cousins, my nieces.

We took a last photo, standing out on the porch in the crust of ice and snow that covered everything, shivering while my brother-in-law snapped pictures with a phone. All of us were there, my grandparents, their three children, their grandchildren, their great-grandchildren. It’s pretty difficult to get all of us together anymore. It felt like a very good and important moment, a time of remembrance and joy. Here I’ll raise my Ebenezer; hither by thy help I’m come…

Though in many ways it was bittersweet, I got my moment of closure. The house was important to me and my family, but it’s been left behind with a touch of benediction. In that house we sang and prayed and lived and worshiped. It’s a good house and I hope it will be kind to the next family who lives there.

At this point in the storyline of Children of the Wells, there are very few characters who have managed a moment of closure, bittersweet or otherwise. Their lives have been torn and destroyed, rooted up by forces beyond their control. It’s going to take time and effort and goodwill for them to remake the world, and the process will be neither quick nor easy. Some characters I can imagine making new lives for themselves relatively smoothly. Others will have a great deal of trouble letting go of the past. Some of them may never manage it.

Most of them had to leave their homes behind. Some of those houses were crushed to rubble, sometimes with family inside. Some characters, who were secure in their abilities and their position in the world, have also lost that which they held the dearest to themselves–their ability to do magic. This loss means the erasure of identity as well as dwelling, and that’s a far greater burden to bear. What it will mean, we still have yet to learn.

I’m looking forward to continuing to follow their journey, and I hope you are too.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the team at Children of the Wells! May your days be merry and bright.