Looking for a New Familiar

Moving day is (hopefully) just a few days a way, and I am scuttling around like... like a scuttle-bug, trying to make all the various pieces of the process fit together: preparing for closing, repairs in both places, packing, etc. Some days are like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, and other days are like putting together a jigsaw puzzle blindfolded while swinging on a pendulum over a sea of molten lava.

In any case, it's all leaving very little time and room for processing the emotional aspects of leaving our home and moving to a new one. But after lots of running around for the new house the other day I was getting off the interstate near our condo and I realized how automatic and familiar that drive home has become. It occurred to me that this is the longest I've lived in the same place since I left home for college.

In fact, if you count two places where I lived for eight weeks each [Jesus College, Oxford; and San Francisco], this is my seventeenth move since age 17. That means I've moved an average of once a year during my adult life, and when you add in 6 months backpacking in Europe -- a time during which I 'moved' almost daily -- it seems that my life has been fairly nomadic overall.

But we've been here for five years. Five times the average. And even though the last two years have been full of wishing for more counter space, a yard and room for storage; now that we are actually packing up to leave, I realize how hard it's going to be to leave. I've spent most of my life feeling more comfortable moving than standing still, and yet this time around I'm nervous about the process of uprooting.

And, maybe the planting, too. Of course I'm so excited about the awesome house, and everything that comes with it -- it's something we have wanted for a long time. A couple of weeks ago a colleague of mine asked if this was our "forever house," and my first response was "yeah, it certainly could be." Because I really do love the house.

But maybe it's just the idea of being someplace forever..... for someone who's spent literally half her life looking around the next corner, scoping out new opportunities, spending weekends house-hunting from the curb.... well, a "forever house," is kind of an adjustment. I was driving around on my lunch break a few days later and passed a couple of houses for sale; instinctively, I slowed down and found myself thinking about property prices before I realized that I don't need to do that anymore. It's exciting, a bit unnerving, wonderful, and hard all at once.

The whole experience is a good reminder for me that even positive changes are challenging and scary sometimes. I think it's helpful if I keep that in mind with my clients, my hubby and my friends. And of course, myself!