Our house is now officially, undeniably ours. We have signed our names a gazillion times at our closing (after which we celebrated with a lovely lunch date at a favorite neighborhood restaurant). We have packed up our apartment. The movers have come and gone, and left relatively little damage in their wake. We have hauled the last dregs of random stuff from the apartment, and cleaned our former home until it shined. It is done. And yet, it is also just beginning. Moving is only half the process; moving IN is the other half. All those boxes that we packed now have to be unpacked. And new living places need to be found for the contents of all those boxes. All of my familiar points of reference, all the places where things went in our apartment, no longer exist. It is both exciting and enough to drive me crazy. Sometimes I wish I had my own magic wand from Ollivander’s so that I could put the house in order in minutes. But at the same time, the process of reacquainting yourself with all your things is always a fun journey, and the deliberate, careful placing of those things in a house helps to make that house your home. There’s no quick fix; home-making takes time, energy and patience.
This move was not nearly as difficult for me as past moves have been. We did not leave our community, or even our neighborhood; we moved less than a mile from the apartment building where we lived this past year. We also upgraded; this was not a lateral move. Instead, it was the fulfillment of our long-time dream of home ownership. The fact that this was a desired, entirely voluntary move rather than a move brought about by school or a job made a big difference. Only our stuff was packed up and moved, not our entire lives!
Even so, I was surprised by how hard the move was for me. Physically, moving is unbelievably exhausting, and it doesn’t matter a bit whether you are moving one block or across the continent. This entire week, I have been catching up on sleep, and just enjoying being able to SIT for longer than a few moments. I’m finally beginning to feel somewhat rested again physically.
Mentally, it’s going to take longer. The real shocker for me was that I still found myself getting sad, even teary at times, as we packed up our apartment. It was a very nice home for the past year, and even the excitement of the new house could not stop my tears. There’s something deeply unsettling about losing your home, even when you are looking forward to the next home. Maybe it’s knowing that you’re going to feel a bit homeless, and that you will ache for the comforts of a lived-in home, during that weird period when you are living someplace new that has not yet become your home. Maybe it’s seeing your whole life reduced to giant mounds of boxes you are taking with you and trash you are not. Whatever it is, it is painful for me to disassemble a home, apparently even when I am moving to an even more desired one. This was the unexpected revelation of this move.
I am hoping for energy-filled days ahead so that I can make great progress on the boxes and turn our new house into our home as quickly as possible. We are already enjoying living there, and it is beginning to take shape. We are having fun figuring out which walls pictures want to live on, and sitting on our deck in the evenings watching bats swoop around and listening to the blue jay family bed down for the night. After years of single-floor living, it is such a novelty to us to go UPSTAIRS to bed, or DOWNSTAIRS to do laundry. This house is going to become a very happy home for us with time and lots of loving care. In the here and now, though, we’ve got to keep our sleeves rolled up and keep the moving in moving forward. Our home is waiting.
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