Zen and The Art of Moving Often

The key to moving is less stuff. I enjoy purging more than acquiring. I sold everything I could from my current house, the sofa, the washer and dryer, two beds, and some bar stools. I made daily trips to Goodwill. Nostalgia isn’t worth as much as cash in your pocket. I bought new furniture. I saved on the moving expenses because the furniture company delivered. I also occupied both places simultaneously and moved in stages, creating the ideal conditions for sterilizing the new home.

Strategically, the first thing I moved was recycled wrapping paper, three thin totes of it to my bedroom closet. Next I moved a plant, a big one. I left it on my kitchen counter, hopefully doing some kind of carbon dioxide, oxygen exchange thing to the air in the place. Of course I cleaned thoroughly first. Not a nice organic clean, but a chemical spill instead. The idea of living in someone else’s stale germs caused shallow breathing, racy blood swelling in my brain, and a dull ache in my left breast.

I usually have a cleaning person handle this, but my wallet suggested I do it this time. After a few hours on my first mission, with plastic gloves and facemask forgotten in the bag on the kitchen counter, entrenched in the depths of my stand up shower, I mixed the concoction, and then I remembered when I was younger on The Today Show or maybe Dateline, a report about people who died from mixing cleaning chemicals in improperly ventilated places. This new anxiety compounded with the bleach, mildew spray, Comet cleanser, and steam drove me from the house in a full blown sweaty palm, call 911, panic attack. After a series of meditative breathing exercises and a healthy self talk, “I don’t want to die today, I don’t want to die today…”, combined with curling up in a ball on my bed, I felt better.

I returned every day for 3 weeks, carrying one thing or another. A Pier One shelf made the cut. Amazon shipped me a front door mat. I bought new seagrass area rugs from Celadon. I mopped the floors and placed a bucket of Murphy’s Oil Soap and an open box of baking soda in the middle of the room.

In keeping with the staying high on household chemicals theme, I spent a few days reviving my wicker porch furniture. Six cans of white spray paint, indented and stained white pointer fingers, and some new cushions, this will be worthy of my new space. I thought a lot about my mother. She made chicken salad out of chicken s@*t every day. I start with organic chickens, no wonder I make gourmet meals. My teacher was a master.

Before

After

I repainted and carried over a toy bench George made for Jake.

John started moving the garage: kayaks, bikes, tool boxes. All very neatly organized in a wall mount system.

Jake walked in and said, "Welcome to Jake's Sporting Goods."

Drilling holes in concrete and hanging toys might be addictive.

Then the 4 Christmas totes for the attic, and a keepsake box for both Abbey and Jake. New blinds, new toilet seats, and more plants bring life to the vacant rooms.

A box or two moved, and a bike ride on the beach. Another box, and I sat on my deck watching the sunset.

Jake and Abbey helped at first. Using his toolbox, Jake removed all the old toilet seats, Abbey installed the new ones.

Abbey wasn't so invested on moving day. Instead, she played paintball for 6 hours with her friends. The next day, while everyone worked...

Abbey retreated to her virtual world.

And Jake wished for his iPod and wi-fi.

Vegetable container garden, beach toys, and winter clothes, all moved in one day.

Container Garden

Beach toys

Alex and John spent the weekend moving my heaviest pieces of furniture, a pine roll top desk, matching armoire, dresser, a cedar chest and two, extra-cumbersome beds. They moved boxes of miscellany and the dining room table too. Alex’s superhuman strength and John’s spidery superpowers made it look… actually it appeared extraordinarily difficult.

At one point Alex had the very heavy armoire resting on his chest and knee. Notice John straddling the banister?

My move in date is tomorrow. My new furniture was delivered today.

Ahhhh, settled in for summertime.

Trading Sunrises for Sunsets

My new house is very much like my old house; instead of watching the sunrise though, I'll watch the sun set.
When I was a child 40 seemed old.
Monumental birthdays have never had much power over me. Sweet 16 was bitter, 21 was dark, 30 was like 60, so I didn't expect much from 40.
Forty means I look like a teacher on a college campus instead of a student, but this time I like the way I look.
I have more medical screenings now.
I make choices like bangs or Botox.
I think seriously about retirement and my children moving out. Both make me cry.
I forget things on purpose now.
And I don't need a large social circle at all. No more Pampered Chef parties running rampant in my circle, and first weddings and babies and all the parties that go with them are gone. I like 40. I'm not trying to be twenty something.
I'm half way to 80. I wonder how many people get there.
I don't ride my bike without a helmet any more.
And I don't need to prove my self physically, mentally, financially, or any other way.
I eat healthier because I know people battling disease instead of hangovers. Although my closest friends still battle hangovers.
Exercise is for health now, not weight.
I know the difference between what I want and what I need, and at 40 there's not much difference.
All the years that led up to now have taught me that not much matters beyond experience and the lessons woven into them.
At 20, I was in the dark, jumping off tall buildings without a safety net, running, and hiding, seeking someone to fix me. Dangerous.
At 30, I was in the future, hijacking my own dreams, manipulating, and failing, a lot. I needed everything. Insatiable.
At 37 death glared at me, laughing at all my misunderstandings.
I gave up on fixing me and started being me.
At 40, I'm in the present, moving through moment by moment, accepting everything as it is, expecting nothing, having faith, and choosing happiness. Skipping stones across a river. Contentment.

What did we used to do for fun?

I remember coming home from the hospital with Abbey.
She was born in Summerville, and we had to bring her home to West Ashley.
George drove in the slow lane and never accelerated over 15 mph.
I remember feeling so safe, glad he understood the significance of this car ride.
I remember counting her toes, studying every inch of her skin, learning the expressions, sounds, and smells of this gift.
I remember her father and I arguing over whose turn it was to hold her, whose turn it was to rock her to sleep.
I remember asking, many times, what did we used to do? How did we spend our time? What possibly could have mattered before this fairy, this pixie, this sprite started casting her spells on us.
I remember when Abbey was 4 years old. I told her I wanted to freeze her. She would always be my little 4 year old girl. She promised she would stay.

Everything changes.

She's 12. I want her to stay 12. She still likes me (sometimes). She asks for my advice (occasionally). She giggles (often). She jokes about everything. She knows she's beautiful, but doesn't let it matter. She's changing into a woman. I cry at night wishing my baby would stay, childlike, or at least with me.

I want to bottle her joy, her laughter, her sincerity, her kindness, her love, her wisdom, her humor, her gentleness, her faith and her hope.

I celebrate her life, everyday. She's my little goose, my baby, my mini, her father's joy.

My Gypsy Soul

I'm moving again, 15 times in 23 years. This will be my 16th move since I left my parents house.

Every move I've made except one has been an upgrade, about living well on a budget; about experiencing more than one perspective and not getting too attached to anything; about realizing and accepting where ever I am, there I am; about not being responsible for one piece of earth, but immersing myself in the beautiful parts of it.

I've lived at antithetical spectrums of comfort, and I know for certain, I am capable of happiness or escape. Home is whereever my love has air to float and silence enough to illuminate my smallness.

Not all of my moves were centered around peace, but progressively they lead to it.

In college of course I had a different address every year, first the dorm, then the Towers, then to Oakland, and then Greentree. The first time I lived alone, evaluating empty space, hearing the beauty of planned silence, was Bridgeville. Alone felt right.

I left blizzards and break-ups for sunshine and solitude. In my post graduate school move from Pittsburgh to Summerville, I lived with my sister, then on my own so briefly before I opted for the rent free relationship with George in Mt. Pleasant.

George and I moved into the condo in West Ashley before Abbey was born.

Her birth prompted the move to the pink house, lasting 3 years.

Then the New Jersey debacle, Hopewell, lasting only 1 month, while 8 months pregnant with Jake, without question the move that altered my perception more than any other single living situation. 3000 square feet of a Norman Rockwell painting on an eclectic street near the swanky town of Princeton and the least happy I've ever been in my adult life.

I felt enormous, bloated, trapped, hollow, desperate, and alone. Not the alone of my youth, but an alone in my bones, my muscles, my veins. I was sharing my space with Jake, and I was suffocating from the weight of the New Jersey winter air. Nine months pregnant, I chose homelessness and left as quickly as I arrived. I felt no shame, no need for explanations. My dreamy New Jersey home was every lie I ever told, the turning point, the collapse.

Returning to Charleston, I sought pity from my sister, again. Abbey and I stayed in her spare room just before Jake was born.

Next we tried and failed at owning a precious red brick cottage in Byrnes Downs. Leaving there, in a big freedom move, I landed at the beach, a condo on an island.

In a groundwork laying situation for the cataclysmic events that were to become my next experience I moved back to the neighborhood with the pink house. We chose a little yellow bungalow on the lake. While in the post death fog, I set the kitchen on fire in that house. The landlord thought it might be best if we didn't continue our relationship. I was only there for 10 months, and I brought ghosts.

Not without realizing the lake move was by divine design, I surrendered and let fate carry my J. Crew Peace bag back to the beach, a condo on a secluded little island on the river with a dock and a pool. Three years in paradise, I called it our healing place, but even there we moved. I started on the marsh side, but within a year I moved across the street to the deep water side in a deal that actually saved me money.

Change and movement, far from frightening, keep me in a place of faith. I don't try to hold on so tight anymore.

It's time to move again. Abbey knows it. The owner wants to sell. I've been working on my temporary PhD. in the rental market. And we waited patiently for alignment, the rush of fortune and certainty. Everybody expresses what features are important to them, a pool, a neighborhood, a view, our friends.

The condo at the edge of the river, 3 blocks from the beach, with a pool and a dock, for yes, less money, will do. I sometimes think I'm a criminal. I must be a con artist or maybe a sorceress. I'd rather the magic than the manipulation.

Abbey surged with excitement as she reduced her possessions for the move. Purging is part of the addiction. Moving this often requires a minimalism and detachment, selling anything of value and converting it to something ideal for our new space.

It's fresh, an extra spring day, an extra morning hour, one more view, no homework, an empty bag, and an insatiable appetite for what's next.

I won't have the last box unpacked in my new place before my curiosity searches for what might have been.

The universe has opened up for me, again. I'm trading the sunrise from my bedroom balcony, for the sunset from my living room deck. I'm trading an island trail, for the entire beach. I'm trading river and marsh, for river and ocean. And my friends, the Spahrs, will be 2 blocks away.

Moms do have favorites.

Abbey cleaned the kitchen for me last night. This morning when I went to get my tea cup out of the cabinet, this is what I found:

"Ha!" she half laughed, "does that mean it's no good?"

She continued helping by emptying the dishwasher this morning. We chatted about family names, middle names. She knew grandma's was Anne, Carole Anne. She knew Kiki's was Anne, Kimberly Anne. She knew my middle name, Lynn. She didn't know Nicole's. I told her, "Lea."

She giggled. She usually does, then replied, "Kiki's the lucky one; she has it perfect. The great hair, the good middle name, you can tell she's favorited."

In a reenforcing moment, on the way home from Clemson, we decided to stop in Columbia and have dinner with Kim. She was on her way home from Orangeburg with Alex; the timing was perfect. Filled with excitement to see my sister, Abbey announced in the car that of all the grown ups in her life, Kiki was the best, her favorite.

Jake said, "no offense mom, I have to agree."

Maybe they were expecting disappointment, envy of sorts, but I simply explained, "I lived the first 16 years of my life in the same house as her, and I've been trying to stay that close ever since, and a couple times I worked my way back into her house, I get it. She's my favorite too."

Everything matters. Nothing matters.

I am insignificant, a dot mixed in with all the other specks
eggs hatching into breakfast or birds that will learn to fly
and yet I care to matter.

Love gives
my daughter,
holding her, staring, smelling, caressing, humming promises of perfection
chi, karma, others before self
I don't deserve her, gentle, kind, silly, balanced.
giggling over a nonsense word, crying because of a frog
Doing everything and nothing and not caring to matter.

Sons own their mothers. My mother makes sense.
A glance up from an unfinished dinner plate
piercing blue through my skin to the soft layers
of muscle that wrap around him
banishing the monsters from this moment.
Dark places exist.

Less stuff is better than more space.
My head is crowded; my house is not.
Flexibility, Mercy and Forgiveness

Money makes life easier, paper and
nothing stays,
liberation initiates changes
accepts it on its terms
moves through it with ease

The mirror doesn't create an image;
the mind does.
Broken, blood dripping from my knuckles, Drowning,
out of town, my ego behind me
books before me, Tolle, Buscaglia, Throreau
spinning into the next dimension
cartoons for acquaintances

Integrity pushes through for a front row seat
sitting behind arrogance, greed, duplicity

Truth tarnished by reputation cries
a voice dangling under the sea,
gasping at delusion, pride, myth
just doing right

If I should have a daughter...