We just moved. It's been a week and I'm still not sure what to do in this tiny little apartment. We don't know our neighbors and it's been too rainy to spend time outside. So I've been cleaning and trying to pay more attention to my daughter. Poor dear seems desperate for a playmate. Especially now that we're so isolated. No more just opening the door and being a part of a neighborhood we know and love. No more neighbors walking their dogs and stopping to say hello. No more sitting on the front porch soaking in the sun and just being outside. No more greeting neighbors coming and going from the door next to ours. No, now it's never seeing but always hearing the people that surround us. Kind of a strange concept, really. It's interesting how much you can learn about people just by virtue of hearing their movement in their homes when you don't even know what they look like. It's definitely been an adjustment. I miss our house. I miss it terribly. But even then I miss something more than that.
 |
| The home we just left |
A few years ago my sister and I were talking on the phone. It was quite coincidental that we discovered we both crave a home that doesn't exist. Only an illusion. When life gets hard, when transitions come, when we feel lost....it's quite natural to have that overwhelming feeling of just wanting to go home. The strange part is when you feel that way while you're currently at home in the house you live in. My sister and I had both independently realized that when we have that feeling it's for our childhood home. The place I lived for the first 13 years of my life. Where we faced many of the difficult trials we've had. I call it an illusion, though, because if we walked into there today I often wonder if the same feeling of nostalgia would exist as it does in the mind. My guess is we miss the home we knew and loved then. Just the way it was. With the people who were present at the time. But that exists in the past and can never be again.
 |
| The home where I grew up |
Sure, I suppose it's possible to create a new home. One where we will provide that experience for our own children. But, at least for me, I don't think "home" can replicated again. It will forever be emblazoned in my memory. And I will always miss it. Just as I will always miss the house we just left.
I've never been very good with life transitions. Change makes me sad more than it makes me excited. Seriously, though, I've never even changed my style of clothing or hair. I mean never. I cried the entire night before my 10th birthday because I would never again be one digit in age. There is just something profoundly heartbreaking to me about big changes. I don't like endings, even when it means the beginning of something that could possibly be greater. I was reading an article recently that taught the natural human resistance to endings is a testament of divinity. It struck me as quite beautiful. We dislike endings so much because, as eternal beings, endings are unnatural. Our marriages and our families are forever. Our lives, after mortality, are eternal. Maybe my extreme aversion to change and endings just means that my spirit is strongly remembering my eternal nature. I don't know if that's the case, but it's much more poetic than the pathetic alternative I'm inclined to define myself by.
It's kind of funny, with all of this change that's been happening, my mom, who is often emotional, has been portraying an increased level of emotion. Namely, crying. Over the last week my daughter has asked me several times if mommies cry. I tell her that they do. But this seems to be confusing to her. It occurred to me that she has never seen me cry. I believe that I feel and express emotions differently than most others and one of the main differences is that I hardly cry. Not for lack of wanting or trying to. I just am not a crier. When I do cry it's usually a tear or two and that's it. I know this transition is hard on my daughter and I feel badly that I am unable to demonstrate a range of healthy and natural ways of expressing emotion. Parents, I think, are often inclined to feel responsible for the way their children turn out. I'm definitely no exception. I'm already worrying that my lack of crying and setting that example for her will inhibit her in someway. Oh dear. How silly that sounds once I say it! Yet, it's a true parental fear.
In any case, that's where life is for me right now. I'm sad, I'm lonely, and I'm nostalgic. But I'm grateful. So grateful to have a roof over our heads and to still be with the people I love. I'm grateful for all the help we've had and for this small trial that has helped me to grow a little more, appreciate blessings a lot more, and perhaps even be the wiser for it. I'm grateful for the luxuries I have a bad habit of taking for granted. I'm grateful to have a job and an income. I'm grateful for my friends and family who love me and accept my love for them. I'm grateful for my personal talents and skills. I'm grateful for my daughter who teaches me everyday what it means to be a better person.
And, world, I'm grateful for you. Whoever and wherever you are for all the beauty and wonder you provide in your own special way. To you, at times, it may not seem like much, but the world would not be as bright without the light that you contribute.
