Moving On

Last week was filled with visits from old friends colliding with my present world.  While catching up with my old high school friend, Karen, my step-daughter was at the house getting geared up for moving her Nana’s things out.  I sat next to Karen as she deftly knitted away on a scarf of lacy yarns while I wore a finished one she had given me in my favorite green and rust colors, wondering how it was going for Christie as she looked over all the things she grew up seeing around her Nana’s house.  While catching up with my old college friend, Dan, my step-son stayed by the side of our old man, Rusty, until the dear old dog had to visit the vet for the last time.  Sitting between Gary and Dan at a comedy show, I laughed just as hard at the two of them heckling away as I did at the comedian’s morose humor.  Somewhere, deep in my brain, I was with Rusty.  Thinking of all the times he made his great escapes from the yard. Keith would hop in the car and coax him into chasing behind it around the neighborhood until his tongue dragged on the ground and he stopped bounding along.  Then Rusty would be content to go home.  I could not shake the thought that he has now made his last great escape. Keith is waiting for him, engine revving, just in case Rusty wants to chase freely behind him.

These are bitter sweet days.  I’ve made the decision to move out of the house so that I can rent it.  It is a fiscal decision, simple as that.  Emotionally, there is nothing simple about it.  All the children are pitching in to clear out everything they ever wanted or think they might need.  I spend my days off, loading up the car and making hauls of stuff to the new place.  Each shift of things from old place to new place brings me joy and sorrow.  As if I’m starting with a clean slate using pieces of my life infused with memories of all that was and gone.  My grandmother’s dishes now rest on a beautiful oak hutch as if they belong there, while images of those same plates sitting on her red counter tops drift into sight.  The sewing machine the Klinglesmith family gave me 20 years ago sits perfectly next to a handsome mahogany leather couch and I think of all the miles of battenburg lace I sewed onto bed sheets with it while working on “As You Like It” at the Shakespeare Theater.  The hutch I managed to sweet talk away from the boss 10 years ago has a new home and the scrapbooks I’ve made over the years will once again live on its majestic mahogany shelves.

Once again, I’m meshing what was with what is already there, in a new abode.  Just as I did when I moved in with Keith 8 years ago.  Today I had my moment.  I had moved a desk without thinking, so I moved it back.  Sitting on the floor under it, hooking up the wires and cables to the computer, I had to stop.  The sobs were too strong to focus on the task at hand.  I couldn’t comprehend why. Tears rolled down my face while sitting under a desk in a little room, wondering if I would ever be able to stop this disjointed life I live.  To move to a place that is not yours that feels like home.  To own a home that feels like it isn’t yours any more.  It occasionally pushes me to madness.  Just as I stand on the cliff, ready to to make that final leap into that dark mad place, a couple of gentlemen show up.  They load up the truck with a mahogany book case, hang curtains, clean the weeds away from the deck where my firepit sits, and allow me to have one little room with a desk I can cry under.

Moving is stressful.  Moving on and moving is, well – I don’t know – strange.  I know the shifting from one place to another will end and I can stop this mind racing project and start a new one that might cure cancer or solve homelessness.  Something a little more productive and constructive.  I think Rusty had it right.  If you have to escape the yard, do it in style.  Run till your tongue drags the ground.  Only chase the cars driven by people you love.  Never look back unless you absolutely have to.  Feel the joy of just moving.  And take a nap when your done.