Goodbye, Toronto

Last month, we sold our house in Toronto. Today, I was in it for the last time.

Of course, we haven’t lived there for more than two years. But this year we decided to quit hedging our bets: we’d sell the house and commit to life in the U.S. My sister and brother-in-law (and, starting last year, niece), who had been living there, helped to get the place ready to be seen, and then our agent sold it…the first day it was on the market. Canada’s recession hasn’t been as bad as America’s, but still, I think we were very lucky and had a brilliant real estate pro working on our behalf.

With the closing nearly upon us, we planned our trip back. Thank God for Dave “House Husband” Cole, who was able to spend the week here doing all the remaining packing and organizing. I arrived this morning, and after a very brief meeting at our lawyer’s office to sign the few relevant papers (fifteen minutes, in and out — take a lesson, AMERICA), I went to the house to go through the four boxes of my things that remained and tossed out probably half of that. Finally, I decided I could part with my English papers from high school and university and the Fametracker stories I used to draft out longhand (!!!). And wow, I really used to buy a lot of stationery when I had a whole office to keep it in.

Parting with the house has been a very different experience than I had expected. On my drive in from the airport this beautiful summer Friday morning, I found myself overwhelmed with nostalgia for our old life. When I was self-employed running a TV website, I used to get in maybe a recap a day during the summer months; we looked forward to summer like schoolkids do. The hotel where we’re staying on this trip is just a few blocks from the gym I used to go to every weekday, so the cab driver even followed some of the same route I used to take to get there, and I remembered how nice it was to have those few hours to myself, and to follow that up sometimes with shopping in Yorkville — and then, if I felt like it, an afternoon nap.

But when I actually got to the house, for some reason all I could think of were the bad times! Self-employment has a lot of downside, too — particularly when you start a successful website in 1999 and have to scramble to keep it alive and yourself (generally) out of debt through the internet bust that follows. Our story ultimately ended well, but we were extraordinarily lucky there too, and there were some pretty grim days and months before that. Compared to our wee little one-bedroom apartment in New York (which we love), the house seems so big now, and so full of encumbrances and obligations. It’s almost a hundred years old now, and it could be a lot of work. When our sewer backed up in the basement (…the first time), we’d only been living there for a few months — and after that we had to replace the furnace, the dishwasher, the sewer pipe (eventually), and the roof. And every winter, there was shovelling. I mean, I didn’t do it. But it happened.

We had wonderful times there, too. My sister lived with us when she was in university, and though our relationship had been testy at times before that, our second cohabitation made us, like, super-sappy best friends, which might never have happened if she’d lived in a dorm. We hosted dozens of Oscar parties and barbecues and game nights. We built a nice little home business there. If you’re going to work in your home, it helps if it’s big and comfortable and has lots of room for the crap you accumulate. But we don’t need that much space (or that much crap) anymore.

So goodbye, Toronto! I’ll miss our friends (obviously), but also the veggie street dogs; Shoppers Drug Mart; the plentiful Simpsons reruns on every channel; the free health care; but most of all, Utopia.

I won’t miss the house.

And I hope the new owners just love the new roof.