One of my goals for myself when I was in college was that I wanted to own my own home by the time I was 30. I also wanted to live at least a year completely by myself before I got married. Ultimately, both things came to be in my life. I lived a life as a single girl in my apartment in Bordentown, NJ for a year before I bought my first house at the shore a year later and made a huge commitment to my husband who at that time was only my boyfriend by moving in together.
Our home here always felt transitory for me. It is an hour away from my job, from my side of the family and from most of my friends. We bought it as a foreclosure with the idea that we would live here and build a life together before ultimately selling it. I was ready to sell it once we got engaged, but ultimately, we wound up staying three years into our marriage and two kids later.
It worked out in the end for us though and I am so incredibly excited to be moving into our forever home in just 9 days. However, I am sad that we are leaving our little house by the ocean. We moved in here just as a boyfriend and a girlfriend when I was just starting my first PhD classes and from that, we got our first dog, then another dog, and then we got engaged. Then, we were married, and before we knew it Logan was here, I was graduating with my PhD and then, we had Rory. This is the home of our beginnings and as eager as I have been to leave it for our much nicer home in South Jersey, there is part of me that will miss this little house that we fixed up from the ground up.
We’re leaving it now as a family of four with our tiny zoo. I am sad to see this chapter of our lives ending because in so many ways it felt like it just started. However, we’re trading in our life here to start a new one with a much easier commute for me and much more room for our boys…and who knows what kinds of surprises our new home will bring us. It is also exciting.
The next 9 days will be bittersweet.
Katherine Kuzma-Beck 
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