The Little Things I’ll Miss

We’re getting closer to leaving our rental and moving into our new home, and lately I’ve found myself thinking about something I didn’t really expect: what I’m going to miss.

This apartment was never meant to be permanent. It was a place to land between selling our home in Tiverton and moving into the new one in Connecticut. I’ve spent plenty of time thinking about what I don’t like about it, what I’m ready to leave behind, and how nice it will be to finally feel settled again.

But even temporary places become part of our lives. And there are things here I’m going to miss.

I’ll miss the trees.

There are so many of them around us, tall and established, changing with the seasons and filling the windows with green. I probably didn’t appreciate them enough when we first moved in. They were just…there. But over time, they became part of the view I expected to see every morning. There is something grounding about looking out a window and seeing branches moving in the breeze.

I’ll miss watching the father and his little boy walking to the bus stop each morning.

I don’t know them. I’ve never even spoken to them. And yet, somehow, they have become part of the rhythm of my mornings.

Our apartment community was once military housing. Each morning around 8:00, The Star-Spangled Banner plays on a loudspeaker (the "Giant Voice" system from the nearby Naval Station Newport). Soon after, I hear the father and his boy walking down the stairs and out the door toward the bus stop. There is something so sweet about watching the two of them make that little journey together each day. The father walking beside his son, the boy heading off to wherever his day will take him. They probably have no idea anyone notices them.

But I do.

I've also become slightly fond of hearing the child's footsteps in the apartment directly above us. Never at odd hours and never enough to feel intrusive.

And that makes me think about how many people become small parts of our lives without ever knowing it. The person who walks a dog at the same time every afternoon. The neighbor who always waves from the car. The cashier you recognize at the grocery store. Tiny connections that aren’t really relationships, exactly, but still make a place feel familiar.

I’ll miss the squirrels and birds in our backyard enclosure.

They’ve provided more entertainment than they know.

I’ve watched squirrels dash across the yard and along the fence, birds hop along the ground, and all sorts of little backyard dramas play out just a few feet away. Nature has a way of carrying on around us whether we are paying attention or not.

I’m sure there will be birds and squirrels at our new house too. Maybe even more of them. But they won’t be these birds and squirrels, in this yard, appearing outside this window.

I'll miss the crows.

There are soooo many crows around us! I often see them when I'm heading out to the car, sometimes one or two perched on top of the streetlight, watching me. Cawing. If no one else is around, I usually say hello, but sadly, they never answer. They might caw to one another, but most of the time they just fly away.

Still, I love seeing them there. They've become another small, familiar part of this place, and I know I'll notice their absence when we're gone.

I’ll miss having stores and restaurants just down the street.

Convenience is easy to take for granted until you don’t have quite as much of it.

Need one ingredient for dinner? No problem. Decide at the last minute that cooking sounds like entirely too much work? Plenty of choices nearby. Running an errand doesn’t have to become an expedition.

Our new home won’t exactly be in the wilderness, but I know things won’t be quite as close. I may have to become one of those organized people who actually remembers everything she needs at the grocery store the first time.

We’ll see how that goes.

And yes, I am definitely going to miss the low electric bills.

There is nothing sentimental about this one. I will simply miss them.

And Then There Are the Things I Won’t Miss

Because nostalgia is lovely, but let’s not get carried away.

I won't miss the traffic! Convenience is good, but it has a shadow side, including the constant, steady whoosh of cars outside our apartment, beginning around 5:15 a.m. as people head to work.

I won't miss playing Dodge Car on our street. Parking is allowed along one side of the street, which makes it so narrow in places that drivers have to perform a little dance, pulling in behind a parked car to let someone coming the other way squeeze through. Somehow, it seems to work. I'm amazed that in the year-plus we've lived here, I've never actually seen an accident!

I won't miss the tiny kitchen, where I barely have room for food, dishes, and somehow, the laundry baskets.  

I won’t miss living in a place that never truly felt like ours.

I won’t miss wondering how much longer we’ll be here.

I won’t miss having so much of our life feel temporarily packed away or postponed.

I won’t miss the little inconveniences that come with renting someone else’s house or the things we would change if we could, but can’t, because it isn’t ours to change.

And I definitely won’t miss feeling as though we are somewhere between one chapter and the next.

That may be the biggest thing of all.

This rental has served its purpose. It gave us a place to live while something new was being built. It sheltered us during a year that has contained far more change than I ever expected. It became the backdrop for ordinary mornings, difficult days, quiet afternoons, meals, conversations, worries, laughter, writing, watching birds, walking the dog, and simply living.

That deserves some gratitude.

Maybe that’s one of the strange things about moving. We tend to think of places in broad terms: the house we loved, the apartment we hated, the place we couldn’t wait to leave.

But our memories are rarely that simple.

Even a place we are ready to leave can hold things we’ll miss.

A tree outside a window.

A squirrel running along the fence.

A father walking his little boy to the bus stop.

A surprisingly reasonable electric bill.

And maybe that’s enough reason to look around a little more carefully before we go.

Not because I want to stay. I don’t. I’m ready for what comes next.

But I think there’s something lovely about saying goodbye to a place by noticing, one last time, the small things that made living there a little better.

Have you ever moved away from a place you were ready to leave, only to realize there were things about it you missed afterward?