Goodbye, and God Bless

For all of us sad souls who have to pack our own belongings instead of waving a wand or hiring someone else to do it, I say a prayer for strength, for moral fortitude, for safe passage of Grandmother's china and all the rest. Packing has got to be some form of purgatory, a circle or two of some Chinese Hell, a tool of the Inquisition. It is not something an innocent soul should have to endure.

And yes, the saga continues . . .

Last week I was waiting for this whole thing to be over, for the packing to be done, for the movers to come and for us to be on our way to "something bigger and better" as the folks around here have been telling each other.

This week I've been saying goodbye. There've been dinners, meetings for coffee, lunches, hugs, tears from people I didn't think would cry, no tears from those who I thought would spring a leak or two, and a surprising, sharp stab of sadness here and there. This is it. It's time, at last to say:

Goodbye, women who showed me how to be someone I'm proud of - whose fierce humor and unyielding willingness to kick ass saved me from utter despair in my darkest hours. I hated saying goodbye to you most because I think I forgot to tell you just how precious you are to me. I will write it in letters and send them to you.

Goodbye struggling to be good at something, goodbye self-doubt, goodbye to all that bad ju-ju and goodbye wishing for my real life to begin!

Goodbye, buried pets - CL wants to leave you cheese in an empty cage the night before we go so that your happy spirits will travel with us to our new home.

Goodbye balcony! Goodbye cattails swaying in a cool summer breeze (yes! they sway!)
Goodbye groundhog that lives in our "wetland preserve" - stay out of the street! Goodbye, oh thank goodness GOODBYE three flights of stairs and my truculent Chevy! Goodbye, Tinker, goodbye hazy rolls whose names I don't know. Goodbye brilliant fuschia blooms in the corner of the woods behind the storage place next to us. Goodbye grad school for good!

And also goodbye free haircuts, Goodbye sweet students who reminded me that I need to teach, no matter what else is going on.

Goodbye, Roanoke!

Next week, we say HELLO, New Life! Greetings, New Day! We have waited such a long, long time for you.

Confessions of a Fairy Godmother

It's official - I'm Riley's Godmother! Hooray!

Simplify, Simplify

"The real goal of simplifying, and the First Rule, is to first identify what is essential, what you love, what is important to you — and then cut out all the rest that distracts you and keeps you from doing what’s important."

- Zenhabits.com

WOW time has flown since my last post.

As you may have guessed, CL and I are in the throws of throwing things out, donating stuff and packing our books, not to mention our planters, pictures and other things that begin with "P" but are NOT our plates. We almost made that mistake but caught ourselves in time.

We did pack all of our coats and sweaters, though, and now the a/c in my office has gone nuts and freezes me for 8 hours out of every day. I'm thinking of it as a sort of endurance trial that will end when the moving truck comes at 8:00 am on July 31. First I have to freeze, then I have to warm up by packing and lugging boxes of books from one closet to another, then I have to NOT eat cheeseburgers as a reward . . . you know, it is a lot like training for a marathon. Physical endurance, mental will power and emotional turmoil . . . ah, the joys of moving forward.

I have to say that my wonderful husband is handling the whole packing thing infinitely more gracefully than I am. I find myself looking around our apartment at all the shelves that aren't quite cleared off, the stack of empty frames waiting to be bubble wrapped and packed, the piles and piles of furniture and knick knacks we're giving to Goodwill, and suddenly I need a bit of a lie down. I get so easily overwhelmed these days, it's ridiculous.

Part of me thinks "Holy crap! If you can't even handle the fairly simple process of packing your apartment, how are you going to handle the demands of living and working as a teacher at a SCHOOL?" and then another part of me says "You're an idiot. Teaching and packing your apartment are two VERY different skill sets." and then this other wee voice pipes up and says "You've been spoiled by your husband! You're so used to having someone else around to take care of the really icky chores that you are now incapable of handling them yourself. YOU, the woman who packed up her car with all her earthly posessions and hauled herself to Arkansas!" Huh.

So, instead of quickly and efficiently packing boxes and moving on to the next shelf, the next room, the next pile, I spent the better part of Saturday morning on the floor of our living room sorting through my two boxes of stuff - you know, that stuff that just accumulates over the years? Cards, random photos, glitter, stickers, old concert tickets, etc.? I was brutal with my trashing, but as I was going through the detritus I realized that I really don't need the stuff to remind me of the events or people that are linked to it. I pretty much still think of them on a daily basis.

My trip to Alberta, Canada and the heard of elk sleeping in a field so close that we parked our truck and walked within feet of them, college graduation with my fabulous circle of friends with whom I'm still in close contact, my first boyfriend . . . these aren't things that a body forgets without the physical remiders. It felt good to acknowledge that, to let go of the fear of forgetting or missing and free myself from the physical, just for a moment. Meanwhile, my husband chatted on the phone with his brother while he packed box after box of our fabulous ceramic art, glass vases and other precious stuff that we're keeping, apparently. I don't even think he was really paying attention to what he was putting in the boxes.

Even though I thoroughly enjoy our irridescently hideous fish sculpture, even though I love my giant yellow glass hurricane, even though I treasure the things we've bought together as reminders of trips, of our senses of humor, of how much we love each other, I spent the rest of the day trying to convince my husband, collector of books and plastic cow figurines alike, to trash everything - it felt so GOOD! I kept trying to tell him this, but to no avail. "Jillian, it's not going to save that much space in the long run if we get rid of your favorite shot glass. Just put it in the box." Huh. Again.

Needless to say, he wasn't nearly as Zen about our shared booty as I was about my boxes of treasures. The fish is swimming in a box of biodegradable popcorn packing stuff. The hurricane waits in a tube of bubble wrap to illuminate our new mantle. I would have missed these things if they suddenly weren't there to grace our new home. They are imbued with meaning. No, I don't need them to remember going to the Blue Ridge Potter's Guild show and out of all the gorgeous wares available I chose our fish, or the glee and bliss I felt shopping with my mom for the egg-yolk hued hurricane that would line the aisle at our wedding, but I'm glad he packed them. I'm happy they'll be there to meet us on the other side of this bifurcation in our lives.

All I can say is thank God I've got CL. My life would be worth so much less - literally and figuratively - if I didn't have him with me to moderate my extremes, to remind me of what I love, of who I am. So we take the Kung-Foo Hamster that made me laugh through fat, terrified tears as we drove from my parents house in Alexandria, VA to his in Fayetteville, AR. We take the ridiculous set of Mexican wrestler figurines because they are ridiculous and Mexican and figurines. We take ALL the books. And it's okay. These things have and do bear witness to our life together; they are the quiet evidence of animals traipsing through their woods. They make us pay attention to the beautiful in each of us.

The fish is the exact color of his hazel eyes.

The Cow is the color of mine.