Our story is so crazy sounding that I am now hesitant to tell it to people. Which is funny because when I consider you a friend, I tend to share my story and want to hear your story. I dig in for all the things that make humans so damn human. This is also what I love about people: that we are all weird and everyone has a story. You know that meme that is going around about how everyone you know is grieving and so we should tread lightly? Truth. It’s just that after this last year my story has gotten kind of…unwieldy. And when I am really honest the other thing is it no longer makes that much sense to me.
I am writing this on a table that I purchased off craigslist in 2018. The man who made this table also made us a benches to go with it. My friend B in NoVA had a table with a bench and a large, beautiful, vivacious family that she fed around that table and I was invited to eat with them multiple times. I loved the way it felt to eat in a happy group of shared dishes and kids scooting under the table so they didn’t have to slide out the bench. So when we bought our last house and needed a table I wanted B’s table and lots of company to sit around it with. I pictured my family of 5 eating simply and inviting any/all friends to come eat with us and hang out at the big table. You know: sharing food, stories, maybe wine, kids playing etc.
Here’s what actually happened: we realized the house was not going to work for us and moved. Again. So that makes:
- the house S and L were born in
- the alarm home
- E’s cottage
- West Bank house 1
- West Bank house 2
- E’s cottage again
- grandpa and nana’s house
- Herndon
- Fairfax
- the lead home
- J’s house
- Independence house
- (the house we never moved into but flipped instead due to unforeseen issues….so does that count? probably not. but our expectation was to live there so kind of.)
- the last house
- the current tiny house
Each of these moves was EVERYTHING WE OWNED. Real box and tape and moving company moves. And that doesn’t count a fair amount of weeks spent in a hotel situation or 2. And all of these moves were with 2 or more children in tow. Some moves were exciting, but a few just sucked. And this sets the stage for where we are now. For a while it was a good story of moving and perseverance but now, like I said, it’s just kind of shocking to think about and for my kids, at least, pretty difficult. Shit it’s difficult for me, too.
It’s been so many moves that sometimes my brain is trying to form a map to a grocery store HERE but it pulls up the map to the grocery store in VIRGINIA and I end up momentarily lost. My kids took their first steps in different houses but all in the same state. And now people I really love are living far and wide away from us. Which sometimes makes me feel like an outsider everywhere even though my dear friends are always in my heart. New faces all the time.
For a while we counted on the adventure. Then we used resilience and optimism. And now I personally am just tired of the whole story and tired of moving. And sad. Because literally every house we bought to live in was supposed to be ours for the long term. More than any other house, though, it was the last house that kind of broke me. Painting over the pencil marks on the wall for how tall the kids were when we moved in really got to me. As much as I love adventure and at times have terrible wanderlust, I wanted to stop moving and start having memories accumulate in one spot. In one house. Why? Because I want to be in my 80s and put my head on my partner’s shoulder and look at where S took his first steps. Or where L use to sit and draw for hours. Or where Y started learning to do asana with me. Oh how that train has left the station. This last house really felt like our very last chance at anything remotely akin to a home that the kids “grew up in” and could return, feeling it steeped in the years spent there. I had a vision of a Christmas tree in the same place every Christmas or them returning from their adults lives to sleep over the rooms they grew up in. I envisioned years of dinners in the same room around this same table. The table at which I am now sitting in a rental that I never planned to be in. I definitely am a resilient person, but this is a lot to deal with. I am feeling the losses accumulate and this table is too big for this tiny rented space. And the space is actually to small for all but the smallest of friends gatherings. Maybe the next place will see those dinners happen. But you know what will never happen now? My kids will not have rooms they grew up in. We have a string of christmases strewn across 2 continents and multiple states. We have childhood firsts all over the place. At the moment I have no idea what walls I will be penciling marks on the next time I want to mark their heights. By then they will be taller than me more than likely. Except Y. She is still small. *sigh*
Lastly, my kids are more broken by this move as well. We didn’t plan it. It didn’t advance the family cause the way the others could be seen as doing. And now to add to the litany of issues we deal with we have this kind of cumulative trauma of loss and instability. I did not see the instability for what it was for a long time. Survival you know. But now I see it. My kids are sad. One of them cannot sleep a full night almost ever and falls apart crying in private moments or is angry by turns. Their friends have rooted in place and have rhythms my family has never had: holiday traditions, skills that have evolved because they had time to focus on them and practice (like guitar or dance) while mine have been focusing on surviving one more move. One more new house. New neighborhood. New neighbors. New addresses to memorize. We have insomnia. Anxiety. OCD. Trauma. Stress. I know it’s not all because of the moves but the moves are big contributors.
We also have strength and resiliency and a kind of close knit family culture that other families may or may not get to experience. The kind of thing you would develop if you were survivors of something together. Refugees from something. But at this particular moment I would probably trade a smidgen of that for some routine and the ability to see my kids perform a play, an instrument, start a group, etc. I had no idea how being a rolling stone meant not just adaptation, but loss of the kind of stability that fosters this stuff. I did not realize until these last couple of years that it isn’t just diligence and talent that make kids excel at something. It’s also stable ground on which to build that something. And yes we, the parents and the family, are damn stable in our love and protection of them. But so much energy now goes into the fixing of the trauma that cello is getting shafted. Along with ukulele. I guess that’s all. Want happier posts? I’m sure I have that in me, too. But today this is what’s on my mind.
ps maybe it’s good to get broken now. This tiny house we are renting is cute and we are making it work. Ha also I have such an easy time setting up a household now. I know what I need. I almost have a kit!
Breaking open has been sometimes good for me. I really have held all this together for a long long time.
Piles of Laundry 