Diary of a Move, 1

I have not cried this many times in one week since my hormones plummeted after Jack was born. Right now, the kids are at Camp Grandparents, T is 38 today, and we have done an incredible amount of packing and tossing, and you literally cannot tell.

Moving is emotional, even when it's thrilling.

I have a glorious fire going in the fireplace, Nutmeg is all flat as a pancake and out like a light on the chair across the way. Percy is next to me, and the hot logs are pop, pop, popping.
I awoke early this morning, had a Bourbon cocktail an hour ago and am now enjoying a beautiful glass of Rioja. When the kids are in Rome...
Or is it, When in Rome...and When the kids are away...

But really, aren't they largely the same?

Part of me adores packing. I appreciate paring back to the essentials, streamlining life and house. Perhaps that's why I once streamlined myself. 

Thank goodness that was so many moons ago.

I like the neatness of filling a box. It's like fitting all my boys' wooden blocks back in the provided holder. They will fit, but exactly. No haphazard dumping or thoughtless packing, no. You must fit them in precisely.

I like precision.

I enjoy tossing that which is no longer understood, remembered, used, needed. I enjoy making piles of "keep", "offer to friends"  and "donate." I like sweeping out the garage and dusting behind the dressers; both are easy to ignore when you don't have to pay attention. 

I also like reading old cards and letters, looking through scrapbooks and into the bowels of recycled frames. Behind the glass is always the most recent photograph; then the one it replaced, the one that one replaced, the one it replaced, and so on until you reach the flimsy black and white image that came with the frame and finally the thick backing that turns the many photos into a small vault.

Moving is messy and neat, exciting and wrenching.

The Academy Awards are next month. After we move. We'll be able to host more than two friends for the first time. I love the Oscars, most definitely because since my memory switched on, my parents have hosted an annual Academy Awards party. It was always blue jeans or black tie; anything goes. So is Louisiana.

After seeing The Big Short last night, today we saw The Martian. Seeing movies is one of the many things you can easily do when your kids are away. It's delightful. 

The Big Short was incredible. The Martian was fine. Seriously, The Big Short is a must-see for all Americans. It, like therapy, should be a requirement of adulthood. It was smart, provocative, educational, funny, well-written, well-acted. 

The pizza is hot off the grill. I'm starving.

Moving makes me hungry.

Whirlwind

Gorgeous evenings here lately. 

We bought a new home, and I've been on an emotional twister since. So much to do, immense excitement, packing, purging, remembering. 

I remember being 17 and leaving the home I'd lived in for ten years. Mom and I sat in my old room and cried and cried, years of memories and laughter and trials in those walls. 

Almost ten years into this house, I feel exactly the same.  

The whole family is on board with Sherlock, an utter delight to this fan. We've lost the pipe- what happened to it? Perhaps it'll be found during the move next month. 

Tom's birthday is tomorrow, and his parents invited the kids to stay tonight and tomorrow night. This time together is really the best gift they could give us. 

Tonight we stopped at Macon Bistro for a quick meal at the bar before seeing The Big Short.  

Fallen grits soufflé with shrimp and sorrel, salad and fried chicken with mac-n-cheese and collard greens! Delish! 

The Big Short was incredible. Seriously. Let us be warned and let such lunacy be possible again.  

I miss the boys tonight, just their quiet, sleepy presences. This apartness is good for us all though, and I'm grateful. 

A constant

We live two blocks south of the Maryland line, just inside the northwest part of Washington. We live two houses in from Massachusetts Avenue, too. And our address is 4416 which has always made me enormously happy because 4x4=16 and also, my birthday is 4/16. I adore the neatness there.

The intersection of Massachusetts and Western Avenues (Western being the dividing line between the District and Maryland) is a traffic circle, roundabout or rotary; DCers tend not to use rotary at all and most often traffic circle. But really, whatever you call it is fine. The city is riddled with them so you best figure out some moniker.

Westmoreland Circle has six spokes off of it, and in between Mass Ave into Maryland and Dalecarlia (pronounced Dell-a-carlia, as if those first vowels aren’t “a” and then “e”) Drive sits the Westmoreland Congregation United Church of Christ.

It is a beautiful church surrounded by always-green grass, a few picnic tables and a sign that regularly declares delightfully progressive things. When marriage equality for all became the law of the land, WCUCC put a rainbow flag up flanked by the message, “…And the greatest of these is love.” My eyes filled with tears of love and gratitude every single time I passed that sign, until they took it down, although the flag still remains.

My favorite part of the church, however, is its steeple which soars into the sky. It is as if the Earth has shot up a hand towards the heavens, trying mightily to hold tight and fast to both poles and all in between.

The boys and I drive by this steeple every morning on the way to school. I enter the roundabout on Mass Ave, drive past Butterworth Place NW and Western Ave before exiting onto Mass Ave once more. Every morning the same steeple soars, and yet a new scene awaits me. I anticipate it as I do breath, which is to say subconsciously but gratefully.

Some days the hand of Earth reaches through a blue sky toward a blazing sun. Other mornings it is the only contrast in a sea of gray. At times it looks bedecked with cotton balls and at others the arm of a great compass guiding believers some place.

Frequently I take pictures. Regularly I promise myself I’ll start taking one photograph every morning at roughly the same time. What a beautiful book of stasis and motion that would make.

I am not a believer, and I’ve never stepped foot inside the church. I’m sure I would be welcome, but I don't feel right.

Instead I stay outside, admiring the Sunday visitors, the new message on the sign out front, or the gleaming, expansive windows that line the long walls running parallel with the nave. Always I make time to look up at the steeple. Always I am rewarded.