A month after Greg and I hauled our household 38.4 miles south and west, we are still settling in. Our couches are stuck somewhere in California and we have been walking around boxes and paint cans for weeks. Our living room serves a staging ground for unpacking and sorting, and also as the dog’s other, bigger bedroom. It’s been a month of figuring out where things will go and non-stop organizing—Doing it right, I say, as I methodically label jars of rolled oats and granola, cornmeal, three kinds of sugar and six kinds of flour for the pantry. We’ve ordered so much shelving and storage stuff, the Post Mistress in Rollinsville and UPS and Fed Ex drivers already know us by name. For the first time, even our junk drawer is getting an organizer.
I’m not sure what has gotten in to me. Although I aspire to be tidy, I am tragically messy by nature—a disaster in the kitchen by any chef’s reasonable standard and a harried house-cleaner. Too often, I run out of time and leave a pile of clothes or stacks of books and papers in my wake. My closets look like war-zones, the cupboards are a mess. But something about owning a house has me plowing new fields. In the past, whenever I walked into the squeaky clean house, I got the same goose-pimply, reverent feeling I once had in church. If only, I’d think.
Until now.
Happily saddled for the first time with many rooms of my own, a persistent voice urges me to invest. So it’s been days on end of methodically folding and shelving, labeling and storing, dividing and stacking. Perhaps this is what it means to put down roots. Yesterday, Greg spent an hour planting three perennials, digging out rock and aspen roots, making room for one Snow-in-Summer I’ve carried with me since my days at the High Lake cabin. Both of us understand, I think, that our circumstances have changed. We’re courting a permanence neither of us has known.
It’s a little daunting. We alternately rejoice and freak out.
Greg openly worries about his “to-do” list while I harbor a darker dread. “The last time I was this happy in a house, the last time I felt—at last–I had enough room” I confessed to Greg last night, “it burned to the ground.”
And there it is. My response to loving something deeply is the creeping fear I will lose it. I had it with Elvis for a good part of his life, and Greg when we first met. And now the house. I can’t believe our spectacular fortune to have found a nearly perfect home—one with land and huge decks, a woodstove and gas range, not to mention—wait for it—a walk-in closet–for a price that is passing as a more than reasonable given the Front Range’s out of control housing market. Don’t count on it too much, that niggling voice whispers, you could lose it. My logic? How could we possibly have found paradise?
For most of my life, instability has been something like a second skin. I’ve danced with it so long, I’m not sure how to give it up.
And then I think about the laundry table and hanging rack I’ve set up next to the washer and dryer—and how absurdly happy I feel in not having to fold clothes on top of the dryer. I think about my closet which has shelves for shoes and six separate bins for all my foldables and how everything in it has a place and a space. How it’s been tidy now for nearly three weeks.
When I think of these things, I can finally have some patience for how long it seems to get settled—because as each day passes, I travel a little farther from the part of me that is certain I will lose it all.
When I found out my beloved Husky Elvis had 3-6 months to live, I started a practice, after my morning meditation, of giving thanks for one more day with him. In this way, we lived the last 18 months of his life together. In marking each day with him, in being present, I was able at last to let go of the fear of losing him. And when it was his time, I let him go with a full and complete heart.
I’m not saying my current fear will pass overnight, but I am making a promise to myself as I type this to remember to have some gratitude for just this one day and for the place I’ve landed. To see what’s here instead of what isn’t. Today, after all, is all any of us really has.
That was beautiful.
Thank you, Patricia!
Don’t overthink it. Once everything’s labeled, you’ll never have to fuss with your stuff again. I bought a tiny condo at the foot of Mt. Werner, and after a few days stressing (I’m not worthy. This will hit the fan, etc.) I felt more free than at any other time of my life. Owning your own place means nobody can shove you around or call the shots. I found it liberating as all hell.
Thanks Jeannie. It IS a terrific feeling to have a home. For me, renting meant I was unworthy. And yeah, maybe it’s having someone else reminding you it’s THEIR place. Once I came home when an owner was fixing something my cabin and his wife and friends were lunching in my living room! She also rearranged my woodpile and told me to steam clean the carpet.
Karen, Having just found & read this blog after reading your ‘Walking to Survive’ in the Aug edition of Real Simple, I am in tears and goose bumps are passing through me in waves. There is a *fear* that comes in after going through devastating loss. When I saw “..but also decades of writing-” I recognized your feeling. Last year, in a numbingly hurried rush of moving out of my house of 16 yrs, I mistakenly(?) threw away 20years of journals & writing. Now, living 2500 miles from home, I am hesitant to journal like I used to. Every time I pick up the pen, I cringe and think “why bother?” just like you did.
Taking walks in the nearby forest is helping me to heal and find the courage to start over.
The blog post above is further inspiration & I honor the divine in you for your presence to note and share your experience. Allowing yourself to feel *home* after such a loss must be a bittersweet feeling which can only sweeten more each day.
Thank you for your words!
Thank you, Lori, for sharing your story. I do think nature–the earth–heals a great many things, as I’ve found living in the mountains all these years. Good luck on your path back, and thanks for reaching out.