What 8,766 Days Really Looks Like
210,384 Hours in the Command Center
What 8,766 Days Really Looks Like
In March of 2002, I was thirty-six years old.
We walked through the garage door into a brand-new house for the very first time. The paint still smelled fresh. Every room echoed because there wasn’t a single piece of furniture inside.
So we did the only thing that seemed right.
We sat cross-legged on the brand-new carpet with a bottle of wine, my husband Robert, and Todd beside me, and our two dogs wandering from room to room as if they were inspecting our purchase. We laughed because we couldn’t quite believe it.
This place was ours.
We had absolutely no idea what the next 8,766 days would hold.
Today, at sixty, I’m packing that very same room into cardboard boxes.
A real estate listing would describe it as a kitchen and family room combination. After twenty-six years as a real estate broker, I know those words are far too small. Real estate metrics track bedrooms, bathrooms, and square footage.
They don’t have a data field for time.
Looking around this empty space, I realize this room isn’t measured in square feet.
It is measured in 210,384 hours.
This wasn’t a kitchen.
It was the command center of our lives.
Everything important seemed to begin here.
Businesses were planned here.
Vacations were dreamed about here.
Problems were solved here.
Celebrations happened here.
Heartbreak arrived here.
Healing happened here.
The ordinary days of life quietly became an extraordinary life.
One of my favorite memories is that very first carpet.
At the time, it felt luxurious.
A few years later we looked at each other and laughed. Somewhere along the way, we had become convinced the carpet wasn’t us anymore.
Out came the carpet.
In went the tile we had fallen in love with.
We always jokingly called it our Hemingway floor because it reminded us of the timeless homes we admired.
For years we loved it.
Until one cold Seattle morning when our bare feet hit the tile.
Suddenly, we had another project.
Out came the jackhammer.
In went heated floors.
Then beautiful Chinese slate.
Every improvement wasn’t really about the house.
It was about building a life that fit us a little better than the year before.
Funny how I can remember every floor we ever put into this house, but I couldn’t tell you what we had for dinner last Tuesday.
Memory works that way.
It discards the menu but saves the milestones.
The plans for my real estate company covered these counters.
The business grew here.
The worries came here.
The victories came here.
When COVID turned the world upside down, this room became mission control.
We sat here trying to make sense of a world that suddenly didn’t make much sense at all
It was also where we celebrated life’s beautiful milestones.
New jobs.
Hard-earned promotions.
The day we brought home our very first brand-new Mercedes.
I still remember quietly opening the garage door just enough to peek at it sitting in the driveway.
I smiled.
Then I closed the door again.
There were legendary barbecues around the kitchen bar.
Friends lingering long after dinner was over.
Long hikes with muddy dogs.
The best part was always coming home.
Opening that garage door.
Hearing paws race across the floor.
Feeling your shoulders relax before you even took your shoes off.
That feeling has nothing to do with square footage.
It has everything to do with love.
This kitchen witnessed some wonderfully ordinary adventures too.
Martha Stewart convinced me that ordinary people blew out eggs and turned them into beautiful Easter decorations.
So naturally I spent hours sitting at this kitchen table doing exactly that.
Looking back, I’m not sure the eggs were masterpieces.
But the joy certainly was.
This room also survived my first attempt at frying chicken.
Grease everywhere.
Absolute confidence that I was about to burn the house down.
Fortunately, both the chicken and the house survived.
When surgeries made climbing the stairs difficult, life simply came downstairs.
The house adapted.
Just like we did.
It also held our deepest sorrow.
It was here that the phone rang with the news that Krista was gone far too soon.
Life has a way of rearranging the people we love.
Some move away.
Some arrive unexpectedly.
Some leave us before we’re ready.
The house quietly holds every chapter without judgment.
Through every season there was always the comforting soundtrack of paws clicking across the floor.
Samantha and Charlie.
Later came Lucas and Teddy.
And today, Beauregard and Oliver.
They wander from room to room around stacks of cardboard boxes, looking just a little confused.
They don’t understand moving trucks or escrow or closing dates.
They only know this is home.
Soon they’ll discover a backyard they’ve never smelled before.
Desert evenings instead of Seattle rain.
A new house that will slowly become home.
Just like us.
Looking back now, another memory makes me smile.
Years ago, I took one of my first solo trips to Las Vegas.
I remember driving through Summerlin thinking it was beautiful.
Never once did I imagine I would someday live there.
If someone had whispered to that thirty-six-year-old sitting on the carpet with a bottle of wine, “One day you’ll leave this house and begin another life in the desert,” I would have laughed.
Life quietly prepares us for chapters we cannot yet see.
Maybe that’s one of the greatest gifts a home gives us.
It doesn’t just shelter us.
It prepares us.
For twenty-six years I helped people buy and sell houses.
I talked about bedrooms.
Bathrooms.
Square footage.
School districts.
Market values.
Standing here today, I realize none of those things are what make a home.
A home is measured in muddy paw prints.
Birthday dinners.
Holiday laughter.
Projects that seemed like good ideas at the time.
Phone calls that changed your life forever.
Quiet mornings.
Long recoveries.
Ordinary Tuesdays that somehow become the days you miss the most.
The people who walked through the garage door every day.
When you pack up a home after twenty-four years, you realize exactly where you’re standing.
You’re standing on thousands of ordinary moments.
On 8,766 separate sunrises.
Moments that quietly became a beautiful life.
We were incredibly fortunate to be the very first family to breathe life into these brand-new walls.
Every home deserves more than one beautiful story.
Ours has been told.
Now this house gets the privilege of holding someone else’s.
I hope it wraps itself around them the way it wrapped itself around us.
If you’re reading this while packing boxes, closing a business, retiring, saying goodbye to someone you love, or simply wondering what comes next, I hope you’ll remember this.
A new chapter never asks us to erase the one before it.
It asks us to carry it forward.
Every laugh.
Every mistake.
Every celebration.
Every scar.
They don’t stay behind in the walls.
They become part of who we are.
For weeks I’ve been looking at empty shelves and cardboard boxes, thinking I was packing up twenty-four years.
Now I realize that’s impossible.
The memories aren’t in the boxes.
They’re in us.
Maybe that’s the quiet miracle of a home.
It doesn’t teach us how to stay.
It teaches us how to leave with gratitude.
The address changes.
The people change.
The view outside the window changes.
But the love we built there travels with us.
Always.
As I look toward the kitchen one last time, I realize we aren’t leaving the music behind.
The house was only the instrument.
We are the ones who carry the song.
Thank you for 210,384 beautiful hours.
Thank you for protecting us.
Thank you for holding our laughter a little longer than the moment itself.
Thank you for teaching us that a house can become a home, and a home can become part of who we are.
You were never just a house.
You were home
And if another family is someday sitting cross-legged on this same floor with a bottle of wine, wondering what the future holds, I hope they know they don’t have to create a perfect life here.
They only have to live one.
Because homes aren’t remembered for being flawless.
They’re remembered for being full.
May these walls hold their laughter as faithfully as they held ours.
May this house become their command center, their refuge, their celebration, and their place to begin again.
May they discover what we did.
That the greatest thing a house can ever become…
is home.
