In Limbo
Last week, after I signed my life away to the bank funding my mortgage loan, we finally got ourselves together and started moving several carloads of crap from one side of town to the other. One of these days I will write a post describing this strange transition, how you can feel like you’re in a different country when in reality you’re only 40 minutes away. Not only are we changing addresses and zip codes, we’re changing states. We’re leaving our urban lifestyle for suburban bliss. On Sunday, Trent even mowed the lawn at the new house, which wouldn’t seem like a big deal except at the old house a guy named Rave brings his lawnmower to our house in his broken down van and charges $15 to mow our patch of a yard.
So right now we are living a life in limbo. Half of our stuff is at the new house, half at the old one. I pack my car up with junk everyday and take it to the new place over my lunch hour. Most of the non-essential living items have made their way to the suburbs. Things like photos in frames, books, albums, paintings and extra sheets. This past weekend Trent’s wonderful mom, step-dad and sister came up to Kansas City and helped us paint a few rooms. I now have an orange kitchen and a yellow bedroom, which makes my mother shudder, but makes me very happy. I can’t wait to start living there.
Most of the essential living items are still at the old cottage, preventing us from staying at the new place full-time. Beds, cribs, cookware, tables and giant server racks are still waiting patiently for this weekend, when we will stuff a U-Haul full and leave the cottage for good. This makes me a bit sad. I am excited to move, much more excited than I was a few weeks ago, but it is still hard to leave my old life behind. Our old house hardly looks like the place I love, as it’s covered in boxes and spots of white spackle dot the walls where art was once hung. It is bare and cold, but there are still whispers of my life there. I can still remember pacing the creaky floor, holding infant Lu close to my chest, praying that she would sleep. I remember decorating my first room, our bedroom, while Trent was away on business and his horror when he realized I’d bought mosquito netting to cover our bed. I remember the morning I awoke to flowers and a proposal. I remember birthday parties with friends, walking down to the Plaza and stumbling home in a drunken stupor. There is so much to recall, and so much to be thankful for.
Last night, after filling the car with another load of stuff (this time, toys from Lu’s room), Lucy and I sat our on our wonderful front porch, playing in her sandbox. Lately, she’s been very clingy to me, as her life has been turned upside down. Each day she asks me where that painting went or why her toys are gone or who broke her bookshelf. We try and explain that we’re taking all of these things to the new house, and she usually says okay and moves on. Yesterday, as we sat outside on a cool October night, like we have many times before…when I pregnant with her, when she was an infant, after she learned to walk and now, as a kid that seems smarter than myself on most days…she came up to me and whispered in my ear.
“Mama, you happy!”
Indeed.
Sigh. I remember moving here when my daughter was 9 and my son was 4. We moved inch by inch, it seemed, with the end of it in a U-Haul. If we moved now, thirteen years later, there wouldn’t be a U-Haul big enough.