Moving On
Several weeks ago, I was enjoying one more swim at summer’s end in our farm pool. The air had started to hold the crisp scent of autumn and as I swam back and forth, I kept my eyes on a bluebird family fervently fussing with their nest. Mrs. Bluebird was feeding a late summer brood of hatchlings. “Impressive,” I thought. “You’re heading south soon and here you are squeezing in one more nest of offspring.” It got me thinking of how effortlessly birds up and move, north to south and back again, year in, year out. “This bluebird family better hurry up,” I thought. “Trees are starting to turn color. Winter is coming ...”
I too have a deadline looming on my calendar ... and it’s creeping closer. I am in the midst of a move out of my home of 24 years, a house in the middle of an enchanted neighborhood. The home where I raised my family. The home I made my own, little by little, until it had my fingerprints all over every room, metaphorically and literally. A home with a lifetime of memories, blessings, good times, tough times. It is not a tragic move, not one of necessity or loss, though we are moving into the house of my husband’s parents who both passed away over the past two years. It is a move of choice, of opportunity, of thinking forward, moving into a home in which we can “age in place.” We are moving from one beautiful home to another beautiful home. Around the corner, no less. We are blessed.
But I hate moving. The emotion, the upheaval, the chaos ... I look at my bird friends and wonder, “Do you have stacks of boxes, packing tape and sharpies in there? Do you have TO DO lists on Post Its? Are you purging before your big move? Or are you just going to, you know, wing it?”
I am having a hard time with the purging because I am a sentimental sot. My writing table faces a painting of my childhood home at 21500 Erie Road. Gazing at it that painting every morning, I smell my dad’s Dial soap aroma, hear my mom’s calloused feet shuffling on the kitchen linoleum floors, taste the burnt chicken from backyard grill, smell the mineral scent of water from the garden hose. I still dream of that house.
The home we are leaving is beautiful, built with love and care by its original owners. It is house that is reportedly a replica of an historic home in Maine. Yes, her triple track windows are inefficient and troublesome. And her basement ceiling is low and weird. And her master bedroom and bathroom are smallish and have lousy storage. But her woodwork and her bones ... they sing when you walk in her doors. A quiet, lovely song. Hello, come on in. Walking through my home of 24 years ... my beautiful, imperfect home, one notices its lovely details, its solid sense of roots, of permanence. The new owner will change a lot, I’m sure, as I did. Will they blow out the porch to make a great room? Will they change the wood floor stain to a darker one, paint those kitchen cabinets, as I was going to? Will they gut the basement rec room? Will they love and appreciate this home as much as we did? Yes, they will. They are anxious to get in and start their lives.
But I don’t have time for musings. Purge. Pack. Move. Unpack. Purge some more. Put away ... the process is daunting. Do I hang onto those 80’s tapes? DVD’s? CD’s? VHS? “Screw it,” I think. I throw them all into a box to move them and decide later. I continue packing, organizing boxes, setting things aside for my daughters, for giveaways, for garbage. Labeling things so they have a place to land on the other side of this chaos.
What will my girls remember from our house? The creaky step halfway up the stairs? Arguments at dinnertime? Tiptoeing down the stairs on Christmas morning? Stomping up the stairs and slamming doors? That wonky brick step outside the mudroom that keeps coming loose? The many dinner parties with family and friends? Hopefully they will remember music, laughter, support, love.
Change is hard.
Moving on ... Our new home is a home of beauty, calm, comfort and legacy. I am saying goodbye to the past, but am also stepping into the past, into a different house full of memories. My husband’s parents were in that house for thirty years. Emptying out my in-law’s house, I am struck by the triviality of the stuff we all accumulate through a life. They had lovely things -- the figurines, the furniture, the candlesticks, etc. But when a life is all over, it’s all just left for someone to go through, pass around, give away. The things we carry ... evidence of a life lived. I am floating from my own memories to my husband’s memories, through my in-law’s memories. Looking forward and backward at the same time is giving me emotional whiplash. I keep humming to myself Joni Mitchell, “We go round and round and round in the circle game.” I lay down on the floor of the foyer and cry with gratitude, loss, exhaustion and back pain. I am thankful for the history in the new/old house, I hear my father-in-law’s chuckle as I hold his back scratcher, my mother-in-law’s nervous humming while emptying out her kitchen drawers. I am remembering our Christmases, Independence Days, birthdays, a wedding in the yard. I am thankful for the future we will build there. The house will be different, yes, but as my oldest daughter reminded me, “we will still be us.” Of course we will.
They say one should move every six years or so just to force oneself to get rid of stuff. I have friends who have moved several times. Some who have moved from city to city so often they are unfazed, they are pros at this. The thought of that much moving pains me. As I am in the midst of that process, I am trying to find the minimalist deep inside of me ... she’s here somewhere, under a pile of my old tap shoes and Manta Reef t-shirt from 1992. I am getting rid of kids’ art projects from 20 years ago, books about how to raise children not to be sociopaths, cookbooks never opened but purchased for their culinary porn photos. I grab the cargo pants that I delay giving away because they may come back in style and anyways, they do make my butt look good. But it is all so overwhelming. Family photos, memorabilia from travels ... I vow to never purchase anything ever again.
I pack away my mom’s spatula with the burn mark on the handle, the china set from our wedding (all fourteen place settings). The teacups from a grandmother I never knew. My mom’s cheap floral china coffee cup and saucer and think, “What will my own daughters do with our lifetime of stuff? Give it away to strangers to live a new life? Give it to their own children? What will be the thing they hold onto from our life together?” One never knows ... it’s usually the little inconsequential stuff that holds the most meaning, which is why I lovingly pack my mom’s mangled salt shaker that fell down the disposal during the flurry of a post dinner cleanup sometime in the 1970’s ... more than once. It reminds me of the comforting chaos of her kitchen.
I stop at the door of my old house, running my hands over the hashmarks on the doorway marking everyone’s growth milestones, and think of the past purge/pack marathon. We made the deadline, but it wasn’t pretty. Near the end, I just started throwing crap – sentimental and otherwise – into moving boxes. More and more boxes were labeled “Mary’s Misc. Stuff”. Who the hell knows what I will unpack from those boxes? It will be a ridiculous surprise of familiar flotsam. The pink high top Chuck Taylor sneakers from the bar basketball team I was on in the late ‘80’s or the billowy scarf collection that makes it seem like I am secretly a gypsy or a Stevie Nicks impersonator. It’s all so ridiculous.
Closing the door behind me, I drive around sobbing, thinking, remembering. It is a loss. It is a gain. I find myself driving past my childhood home, thinking to myself, “Who would I be if I had grown up somewhere else? Who would my own family be had we lived in a different house, a different neighborhood for the past 24 years? Who will I be in this new house?” I snap out of my melancholy and think of All. Those. Boxes ... “Who would I be without these trappings, all this stuff I just packed up?” These things are the pebbles I put in my pockets as I’ve made my way through life. I don’t want to attach myself to them too much, but yes, but they do hold meaning and memories. That mangled salt shaker is a family jewel to me. But I doubt any of my daughters will want it.
After we moved out, our new house wasn’t ready so we took refuge back at the farm for a few weeks. I checked in on my bluebird family and found they had moved on. I took down their birdhouse and cleaned it out ... nothing was left but twigs and feathery fluff.
I hope they’re happy in their new place. I know I will be.
I gaze at the cleared-out birdhouse in my hand and think, “I need to buy a couple of these for the new house.”
And so, it begins ...