The real estate agent called me this morning. “I have bad news,” he said, after we exchanged hellos.

I knew what was coming next, even if the grin in his voice hadn’t already given it away.

“You now only own one house.”

And with that, this huge weight that has been sitting on our shoulders for the past five months evaporated as if it had never been. The house is sold. Escrow has closed. It is done.

I know we are lucky. Incredibly lucky. In this market, where every time I turn around the news on the housing market is worse and worse; where one out of every 5 or 6 houses on the market is a foreclosure; where tales of doom actually match the reality of the situation; in this market, we have actually sold our house. No, not just sold it. We sold it and made a profit. Anyone out there who’s been trying to sell a house right now knows how slim those odds are.

It feels odd, to know that this is over. We have known it was coming, ever since sale #3 passed all the critical milestones – full funding approved, all contingencies released (early), every indication that the new owners actually *like* our house and wanted it badly enough to find a way to meet our counter offer. But with this market, and still smarting from the two previous failed offers, there was always this fear that things could still fall apart, and we’d be right back where we started.

We drove by the old house this past weekend, to drop off all the keys and garage door openers, and we walked around the whole thing slowly, for the very last time. How tiny the office looks, now that the built-in furniture is gone. How strange the downstairs looks, with the new, ivory paint. How odd it was to walk around the yard, looking at the trees, remembering when they were first planted, commenting on how much the silver sage keeps on spreading to take over the back corner, noting how much the new owners’ kids will enjoy playing, back behind the strawberry tree, trying to remember where in the raised flower bed that Rebecca and Allegra lie.

This was once our house. Once our home. Once upon a time, I knelt by the open window as dusk settled and listened to the rain outside as it pattered on the roof. Once, long ago, I spent three days sponge painting that dining room in three amazingly gorgeous shades of blue. Once, back in time, we hosted family dinners there, and the nephews and niece ran crazily up and down the stairs and through the back yard there, and we all sat outside in lawn chairs, covered in blankets I knit by hand and we watched fireworks late into the night.But it is not our house anymore, and more importantly, it is no longer our home. It hasn’t been our home since the moment we cleared it of every single possession and moved to our quirky Sacramento home, with the odd cement circles in the backyard, and the squirrels who chitter without fear at any passer by, and the eye-crossing wallpaper that apparently lies just underneath the paint in the entire downstairs.

So now it is over. We have said goodbye. We left the keys and things on the kitchen counter and pulled the back door locked and closed behind us, knowing we can now never enter again without first knocking on the door. We only own one house now. And I cannot even begin to describe how wonderful this makes me feel.