Home is where the hermit crab has been

We have lived in three houses in this town: the new family homestead, the rent-a-farmhouse, and now the mini-McMansion (not quite a McMansion in its own right...). Mommy loves McM. and actually prefers it to going on vacation (why go away when you love where you are), but the boys have the right priorities. They remember the fun, funky little house we first lived in, and love it just as I do. They remember that it was a split-level, and liked the quirkiness of "the door [being] in the middle of the stairs" [or some similar description], they have fond memories of playing in the finished basement (mostly trains, back then), and one of them - Ian, I think - was reminiscing, recently, about how he liked to hide in the boys' bedroom closet.

We drive past rent-a-cramped-old-farmhouse rather routinely, since it's at a very busy intersection of two rural roads - we used to be treated to watching the aftermath of fender-benders outside somewhat uniformly. That's the only house for which I don't have any fuzzy feelings, aside from just the fact that we were all there together, but the boys look back on the farmhouse days with at least a touch of fondness, and it gets them back to the sport of house-comparison. Once again tonight, as we past the farmhouse and they talked about the houses where we lived and what things we liked in them, Ian commented:

"I liked the one where Buster is the best, though."

This is an especially touching reference, because it turns out that the house is primarily associated with Buster. Buster was one of our hermit crabs - the last survivor of a set of three of four, who greatly outlived his fellow pet-shop-alumni, but nevertheless eventually died while we were living in the "real" house, as I like to call it. I was very moved that Ian remembers the old house more as where we had (and buried) Buster than anything else, and it reminded me of our final departure from it, when we were moving out:

As we were getting ready to move to the farmhouse, Ian was standing off at the edge of the backyard quietly, with his back turned toward me, and when I asked him what he had been doing, he said, "I was just saying goodbye to Buster and telling him he was a good hermit crab."

(October, 2010)