restingmotion

Fun Things

A friend and I went on a little adventure last weekend.  We drove down to Brevard, North Carolina, to see the Embroidery Guild of America's 21st National Exhibit.  This was our destination:

We didn't know what to expect, and we drove past the building the first time.  It was well worth the visit, and many works were incredibly beautiful, showing great technical proficiency and creativity.    I didn't really understand some of the pieces, but the creativity amazes and inspires me.

Photography was not allowed.  I bought the catalog so that I could remember things that inspired me.  The back cover is shown above.   Below is a promotional photo from the exhibit.  Oddly, none of these were my favorite pieces. I know the exhibit will be traveling.  I highly recommend it.

The workmanship was so inspiring that I came home and spent the next afternoon ripping stitches out on a piece I had been working on.  I had been dithering as to whether or not it mattered, but it does.

We took the scenic route down, through the Pisgah National Forest.  It was a slow winding road, but quite beautiful.  Just outside the park we had lunch at a bicycle shop/tavern.  The food came from a Lebanese Food truck and was incredibly good.  I couldn't help but think about how much the world has changed in the last half-century.  We took the "fast" route home, on the interstate.  But it took us the same amount of time.  Perhaps it is just the "fast" route because you are moving faster, not because you reach your destination any faster.

Last week I also made garam masala for the first time since I moved.  One part of me can't believe I have lived here for over three months and am only now making garam masala.  But at the same time I also noticed that I had not used either dried basil, tarragon, or oregano yet either.  These are spices that I usually go through quite regularly. There were some additions to the herb and spice rack this week.

 

Perhaps summer food simply cries out for fresh herbs.  I don't believe the fresh and the dried are interchangeable.  Their uses, and their flavors are very similar, but not quite identical.  Perhaps, now that it feels more like fall, I feel like cooking food that allows the flavors of dried herbs to shine.  

Expanding the spice rack while still recovering from a cold/sinus thing, gave me a perfect excuse to fritter away part of an afternoon making matching labels for all my jars.  

 

I'm trying something different.  I am a bit overextended at the moment, and I have been struggling with blogging anyway.  I don't want to give it up, but it seems I've become to stuck in one place, blog-wise, and I want to venture out.  I'm giving myself permission to not stick to a schedule.  I'm also going to try a few different things, like this post, and see what happens.  

 

Until next time,.

 

 

On The San Antonio River Walk

I thought I'd share a few pictures from the San Antonio Riverwalk.

We arrived later than I had hoped on Friday, and Tikka and I were both ready to get out of the car and stretch our legs.  Dallas had been cooler than usual for early August, and the temperature when we hit San Antonio was a bit of a shock to our systems -- 99° at 7PM.  I remember Texas heat from my childhood, but I am no longer used to it.

It didn't seem intolerable on the river walk, probably because we were out of the direct sun.  Tikka was eager for a walk and we went two miles.  I was surprised because she had not been eager to walk once the heat and humidity hit Knoxville, but maybe it was the humidity more than the heat.  

After our walk, I took Tikka back to the hotel and went back out to dinner.  We were staying on the river walk, a little over half a mile from the busiest part of the Riverwalk, where the majority of the restaurants and hotels were located, but I didn't walk quite that far back, dining at somewhat trendy, modern Mexican place, Acenar, where I enjoyed some lovely duck tacos and a perfectly balanced jalapeno cucumber margarita.  

The next morning was cooler, and quite humid, and our walk was shorter.  I don't know if Tikka was tired from the previous evenings walk in the heat, or if it is actually the humidity that she dislikes, more than the heat.   

We walked the opposite direction in the morning, toward the Pearl District, and although we did not walk quite that far, or as far as the previous evening, we still managed a mile and a half or so.  There were more social opportunities for Tikka in the morning as there were quite a few people walking their dogs, and I was happy with the location of our hotel, closer to residential areas, where there was a steady stream of walkers and runners. 

We did not feel either crowded, or isolated, on our walks and we were in a good place.  The last time I had stayed on the River in San Antonio, a couple of years earlier with my mom, we were in the heart of the shopping and restaurant district, where it was both crowded in the evening, but empty-feeling and almost abandoned in the early morning.   This felt like a much more balanced place; whereas the streets above still seemed almost empty, there was a nice mix of old and young, runners and walkers, residents and visitors.  

A Detour

Am I growing more fearful and cautious with age?  Admittedly I paused and had second thoughts.  Tikka and I were out for a walk and at the beginning of the trail a sign had been added to the one listing the rules of the trail -- "Warning, Alligators on Trail".  I looked at Tikka, tail wagging happily, wondering if she would make a tasty morsel.  I am not comfortable with the idea of meeting an alligator,  despite the fact that we did summer in southern Louisiana as a child, despite acknowledging that  knowledge of the presence and habits of alligators, rattlesnakes, copperheads and water mocassins were part of my youthful lexicon.

No, Tikka and I were not out for a hike around Knoxville.  If there are alligators on the trails in the Smoky Mountains I truly do not want to know.  We were in Arkansas, at Lake Dardanelle, near Russellville, in the area between the Ozark National Forest and the Oachita  National Forest.  We were really just passing through; having pulled off the highway on a whim, we discovered Bona Dea Trails and Sanctuary.  It was a nice place for a mid-day walk after a couple of hours on the road.  We took the three mile loop trail, through sometimes dense wooded wetlands, lazy streams, the sounds of insects, frogs and birds. It was green and humid and beautiful. It was completely unfamiliar; not like New York woodlands or wetlands, not like Amazonian wetlands either.  It was simply itself, contained and quiet.   Tikka with her harness and six-foot leash (maximum by regulation) met toddlers in their harnesses and six foot leashes, a happy party for the small folk.  We saw no alligators on the trail, although there were some in the water.

But we really weren't in Arkansas to spend time exploring the national forests, although that could be a vacation well spent.  We were on our way to Bentonville for art, to see a Dale Chihuly exhibit, a slightly roundabout route to Texas. And the exhibit was fabulous, filled with things expected and unexpected, with new insights.  I was struck by the way some of the familiar forms, the nested vessels above, reminded me of a hollow tree we had seen at Bona Dea, how the familiar can be re-envisioned and become new.

Not everything was beautiful, but everything was fascinating.  Perhaps it was the memory of that mid-day walk, but the piece above reminded me of the colors of water and trees, of swampy greens and mosses, of sunlight glistening on wet stones and scales,

 

Perhaps I am getting better at semi-solo travel, or travel with dog.  We have a good routine.  We  rise early, Tikka eats while I have my coffee and read or write.  We take a walk.  She loves to ride in the car and her presence reminds me to look for interesting places to stop and stretch our legs. This is a vacation rhythm that suits me well:  read, a nice long hike or walk, a mid day or early afternoon siesta, venturing out again, perhaps some time looking at art, or drinking coffee in a café watching the passers-by, another walk.  I'm not sure I want to hike all day, or if I do I need a day or rest afterwards.  I can't spend a day in a museum or a craft fair either.  I grow too easily overwhelmed.  I need time to process. But just wandering and sitting, seeing a place, talking to people; this too is just as important as the hike, the art.  There is no rush through life.  At the moment I can simply relax. 

 

 

Word-Less Wednesday

The other daylily  bloomed. The photo was taken in the reflective glow of mid-day sun.  This particular plant is also recovering from its questionable beginnings, so I am sure it will survive.

The remaining photos are from my trip to Asheville last week.  I loved Asheville and will go back.  Most of these photos are snippets and small details from my morning walks.  As usual, I am not very good at photos that give a sense of the entire place, but of the little bits that draw my eyes, such as these grates in a building Tikka and I walked around every morning and evening.  These small details made me smile every time I saw them.

 

I suppose this is not surprising.  When I was 7 my parents took us to the Alhambra.  All I remembered of that palace was the detail of one particular tile floor.  When I returned as an adult, I saw and admired much more, but I did not feel that I had truly returned to the Alhambra until I found the floor that had haunted my memory for decades.

Art was everywhere, not just in galleries. 

Here, I love not only the mural, but the sculpture of cats on the wall.  Art of the everyday.

Tikka and I walked through here every morning, and often again in the evening.  During the day the stands are populated with artists selling prints, etchings, jewelry, and tie-dyed baby clothes.  Both in the early morning silence and during the daily hustle and bustle, it reminded me of many walks in Madrid, of similar venues, and similar gatherings of dawdlers, buyers, and sellers. It felt like home to me in an odd way.

I have an iron just like this, but of course on a more useable scale.

But it wasn't all art and frivolity.  I appreciated the availability of trash and recycling receptacles.  Attractively designed as well.

The craft fair was fun.  Walking around the downtown area, exploring galleries and shops, eating very well, and watching people was also fun.  The glass scissors above are by Rick Beck.  They are very large, although I don't really give you any references except that they rest upon a table.  From my favorite gallery, Blue Sprial 1, where I walked around in a happy daze.  Apparently my taste leans more toward studio craft as art, and perhaps the avant-garde. 

 

Or I just like giant scissors and irons.

 

 

 

 

 

Five Things Friday

1.  In June I went to the Daylilly Festival at Oakes Daylilies with friends.  It poured almost the entire time we were there or I might have shared the adventure with you.  Even though I have basically said that I am not planting, at least not planting perennials I did come home with a couple of medium to short daylilies, which I new would happily fit in a couple of bare areas in the front, areas the previous owner had filled with annuals.   Two of those daylilies have put out buds, one of them bloomed Wednesday. 

Oddly the two daylilies that seem determined to bloom are the two that did not look like they were adapting well.  We have had a lot of rain, at least through the first week of July, and these areas were perhaps a little more waterlogged than daylilies prefer.    Then again, perhaps it is not odd, a plant, I suppose, like any living thing, wants to reproduce.  I wonder if the plant has enough gumption left for me to transplant it, or given that we are currently in a dry period, if it is best to leave it where it is to recover, waiting to transplant in the early fall, before the rains probably recommence.

 

2.  Tikka and I are out on adventure.  The contractors have been busy working at my house since yesterday morning.  Due to the nature of the work being done, we were asked to vacate for a couple of days, so we have wandered over to Asheville. North Carolina.  Tikka is a pretty good travel companion, happy to rest quietly in a hotel room, as long as we stick more or less to our normal routine of meals and walks, which is not difficult to do, and even though summer camp is fun, I think she'd rather go than be left behind.

 

3.  Yesterday evening, the plan had been that I would walk Tikka and then go back out for dinner, but downtown Asheville seems to be a pretty dog-friendly place.  Tikka is a very social girl, mostly well-behaved, but social nonetheless, and she loved the opportunity to meet her four-legged compatriots, as well as to stop and say hello to anyone who said "hello cutie" and asked if they could pet her.  We were out for a while and somehow ended up stopping at a place with a lovely shaded patio and some nearby musicians. I stayed for dinner without taking Tikka home first.  She got her water bowl and settled happily under the table, while our menus were brought out.  Yes, our menus, as there was a doggie menu as well.  Alas Tikka had already dined, although she might well have preferred a bison burger with quinoa.

4. We had arrived in the early afternoon, after spending an extra hour and a half on the freeway due to an accident in the middle of a construction site, and I was tired and hungry.  I found a tapas bar, where I had a lovely glass of chilled Albariño, and a couple of small plates, one of which was the lovely, and delicious, plate of sardines shown above.   

 

5.  Sated, and probably foolish, I meandered back to the hotel.   I passed a store filled with looms and yarn and fibers for knitting and felting, basket making supplies, dyestuffs, and all kinds of fabulous things.  I don't have my own studio set up yet, or my loom, but I am eager to learn and play.  I wandered around, contented to let myself remain dazed.  I'm not ready for more supplies, I just needed to observe the riches.  I kind of like this jumbled photo of multiple looms, looking outward onto the street because it captures my sense of dazed abundance, exactly what I wanted to remember from that first visit.

 

My midday walk was foolish because I neglected to apply sunscreen when Ileft the hotel to go to lunch, and although I probably only spent about 15 minutes or so in the sun, and another 20-30 following my meal, (already after 3) I did get a sunburn.  I had applied sunscreen before leaving Knoxville, since I have a history of melanoma, but that had been hours before, and the altituide is higher as well, although I do not know if it is enough to make a difference. It may be.  I recognize that I have been growing more lax over the years with sunscreen, and I do struggle with the issues of burning, vs UVA (more likely implicated in melanoma), vs vitamin D absorption.  Although I haven't burnt in day to day activities, I've noticed that even though I apply a broad spectrum sunscreen daily, and wear a sun protective shirt if I work I the yard during the hours when the sun is high, I have gotten a little more color than usual on my arms and chest just from day to day short-term exposure.  I've bee lax, and this is a reminder that I need to improve.

 

 

Camp Grandma..

For the first time in weeks I feel like my brain is starting to fire on all cylinders again, although there are some lags and sluggish moments.  I have not quite caught up on sleep, and I am still too busy to completely unwind, but at least I am no longer packing, no longer feeling quite like I'm backed up against a wall.

 

I thought I'd entertain you with a couple of photos from Camp Grandma, which happened two weeks ago (in the middle of all that packing).  Owen and I stayed in a hotel downtown one weekend, while his parents went off on their own adventures.  I could have stayed home amidst the boxes, but frankly thought a hotel would be more relaxing and more fun. 

 

Friday night was Grandma's choice, as I had symphony tickets.  I had promised Owen popcorn during the concert, but I don't think there was any popcorn that evening.  Some kind of sour candies were a suitable alternative.  But before dinner we went to Nama Sushi for dinner.  Owen devoured his calamari salad and made good headway with my sashimi platter as well, which was good because I needed the help.  We shared thoughts about comparative flavors of the different fish, which was a little more briny, the surprising sweetness on the tongue of certain species, and O was better at remembering which was which than I was.  Dinner was followed by the symphony, and Owen had thoughtful comments about the Chopin and the pianist's technique.  I agreed with all that but was also amazed because I think I would have struggled more with sitting through 40 minutes of Chopin when I was his age.

The highlight of the evening however was watching the rain and thunderstorm and the downtown lights through the hotel window. 

 

Saturday was Owen's day, and since it rained a good bit we got to do fun hotel things like order room service and watch too much tv.  We took Tikka for a walk, went out for burgers for lunch, wandered around the Rossini Festival, put on every year by the Knoxville Opera, where we got to listen to more music and engage in all kinds of fun activities. This was one of the advantages of already being downtown.  We were there when the rain stopped, and if we'd had to load ourselves into a car and drive, we probably wouldn't have made it.  We were in the movie theater watching Boss Baby when the afternoon floodgates opened however and we did have to make a mad dash from portico to awning to covered walkway before finally making it back to our hotel looking like drowned rats and doubled over with laughter.

It was a fun weekend, relaxing and worth the time.  Even if it meant once again packing up until the last possible minute, I'd do it again.

Transition Time

Yesterday was moving day.  I posted this photo to facebook; in fact, I posted it twice although that was accidental.  It was taken just before the first truckload left my old house and went to my new house:

 

I don't believe I realized yet how tired I actually was, as I had probably been running on adrenaline for a week or more, that panicked surge compensating for lack of sleep, and sometimes overcompensating and keeping me from sleep when I desperately needed it. Today all my worldly goods, or most of them at least, are at the new house, piled high to the rafters in one room.  Tikka and I, and a few belongings, are in temporary housing near my new neighborhood as the new house is not quite ready for occupancy.  Tikka is calmer than she was last week, but still clingy, and the exhaustion of the past couple of weeks has caught up with me.  I slept 10 hours last night, and although there are things I need to do today, I could easily sleep another 10, or more.  Today, the exhaustion shows in the deep circles under my eyes, in the way the full weight of my 58 years, and the stress of moving show on my face, in my aching knees and hips, the bruises on  my wrists from lifting and hauling boxes.  Today I am tired, but today I am also content.

 

Two more days and I will walk away from the old house forever.  I loved my neighborhood, loved my neighbors, loved my garden.  But this is the last photo of that house.  There are only a few small tasks to be accomplished before I step fully into transition time, the space between houses, the time in which my only ambition is to have no ambitions. It is a good place to be, and I am privileged to be able to enjoy the opportunity.

 

(this post was posted twice because I accidentally deleted the photo of the rose from the old house from the fist posting).

 

Between Spaces: random mutterings on leaving one place for another

I have not disappeared from the face of the earth, but it seems that my words have indeed occasionally disappeared into the bowels of boxes and the rigors of moving.  I would be lying if I did not admit to being occasionally overwhelmed and most certainly overextended.  My brain is full, and if I have not completely shirked the responsibilities of life lived outside the confines of these two houses, I've come terribly close on occasion.  I can confess that there have been desperate evenings when I stay up late packing in panicked desperation, thinking I will never finish, and also mornings when I awake with a start, remembering tasks left undone (despite lists) and all my good intentions.  For the first time in a long time I can honestly say I cannot conceive of taking on anything else right now.  I have no room, no energy, no ideas, no words

 

And yet, all this is not as bad as it sounds even though this move is both harder and easier than any of my previous moves.  My current (old) house has sold and we close at the end of next week.  For all practical purposes, this house is no longer my house, although I will occupy it for a few more days. The truth is that it hasn't been my house for a long time now, since I bought the new house, even though work is still progressing there, and I cannot yet move in.  This space is simply a space I occupy for a short time, the passing of which is marked with each new box, each empty room.  I had thought this process of packing up and letting go would be unsettling, as it was  when we moved from New York to Tennessee, but the circumstances are different now.  This time around, the emptier the house becomes the happier I feel, like I am letting a bird free to fly off on its own and leave me behind.  It is no longer my house, no longer my yard, no longer mine. And as for me, I am no longer tied to this space, tied to this past; I too am free.

 

Another thing I hadn't imagined:  As I pack, letting go of things becomes easy, as if I am shedding layers of dried-up skin that no longer serve any purpose.  I am clearing out remnants of past lives, things that are no longer relavant to my life, things that are chains to the past, to something long gone, pulling me backward rather than allowing me to reach forward.  The process has made me ponder the way we tend to define ourselves by the circumstances of our life, by the idea of what we are, as opposed to who we are.  Who we are, our true inner selves, adapts to the what of our circumstances, but those circumstances don't define us unless we refuse to adapt, refuse to let go.  Not that letting go is necessarily easy, it is not, and of course there are bound to be missteps along the way, but those missteps don't define us either unless we use them as chains.  

 

I see this old house with new eyes and I marvel at its charms.  My neighbors are right, it is a lovely house.  Were I starting over today I would furnish and arrange it completely differently from the way it was, not only from the way it was when we moved in, but the way it was before I started packing.  I see far more clearly how liminal in its own way this space was for me, and I see that, as lovely as I see that this house is, I am not and would not be, the buyer of this house.  It is no longer my house.

 

A long time ago, when I was still a girl, my maternal grandfather passed on two bits of wisdom that have stuck with me, although at the time I perhaps dismissed them, not recognizing their true worth.  One of those nuggets went something along the lines of "if you can't afford to lose it, you can't afford to own it".  Being young and foolish, owning nothing but wanting everything, I thought that was just completely unrealistic.  Now I know better, and see great wisdom in that advice.  It is great advice from a financial standpoint, in terms of not living beyond one's means, but it is great on other levels  as well.  If you own it, or make it, or create it but can't let it go, it owns you and you are not free.  If you can't afford to let it go, you can't afford it in the first place.  For my grandfather, who literally worked his way up from nothing, I'm certain this wisdom was hard-earned, and I'm sure he struggled, even though he lived a fairly modest life, for he was just as prone to hoarding something as any of us.  It is easy to learn to let go when one is surrounded by abundance, much harder when our things mark our rise -- out of physical poverty, out of emotional poverty, out of lack or emptiness of any sort.

 

Yes, I made a house that I feel is beautiful.  I hadn't, in fact, realized that this idea of creating beauty was so elemental to my own emotional self; it is something I perhaps neglected for far too long.   Even so, as much as the new owners may find my old house beautiful, they will undoubtedly change it again to make it fit their lives, just as I am already changing my new house.  My neighbors sit on my back patio and ask me how I could leave, and my only answer is how can I not?  It is, quite simply, time to go, time to let go.  The house is fresh and ready for its new owners.  I have enjoyed this space.  I have enjoyed my beautiful flowers, my patio, the space created here, and yet I am ready for whatever comes next.

Bursting Forth

Yesterday afternoon I kept dozing off.  It was safe, I was happily ensconced at the salon for a manicure and pedicure, and was probably the most relaxed I've been in over a week.  I actually came home and took a nap before busying myself again. Can't say that I was energetic though, I had barely enough energy to spiralize some zucchini into zoodles.  Which was good because it meant I at least had something to eat.

Zoodles with olive oil and garlic, seared scallops.  Perhaps the garlic is darker than I intended, and the scallops lighter, but delicious none the less.

 

You see, I've not been sleeping very well at all.  I stay up too late (because I can't sleep) and wake up too early, and although the circles under my eyes grow deeper and darker, sleep eludes me.  I've been simultaneously excited and terrified, extremely focused and yet distracted, feeling like I am standing on the edge, but on the edge of what? The precipice? Shangri-La?  Likely neither of those.  I just have to open the door and walk through.

 

I am closing on a new house this morning, hence all the stress and excitement.  Why the particular sense of terror mingled with all that excitement? I only suppose that it is that same sense of striking out on my own, of letting go, perhaps mingled with a tinge of fear.  I alternate between being long past ready to move, although I don't yet have my current house on the market and I don't have a moving date, and a deeply unsettling need to hunker down and stay even though I know in my bones that it is not the right thing to do.  Sometimes the familiar is all too appealing.

 

Besides, in a truly rational sense, it is not like I am really doing anything I haven't done before. Its not my first house.  George wasn't even really all that involved in the last house purchase, even though he was here for emotional support, at least in his physical presence and its link to the shared history and relationship.  Intellectually, and often emotionally, however he was not always there, and how I struggled with that loss at the time, with the responsibility I did not want to claim.  I had managed everything for a long time.  Despite all that, despite decades of experience in life and houses,  it is like everything is new, and what lies beyond the door frame is shadowed in fog.

The first Iris Histroides popped its head up this week.  One brave, lonely blossom surrounded by bare ground.  She made me smile. She still make me smile.  She looks so delicate and fragile, yet I know she will survive whatever Mother Nature throws her way, even frosts and snow.  I should take heart in that.  Spring comes regardless.  All you have to do is walk through the door.

Ch..ch..changes...

There is something I haven't told you. 

 

Change is afoot.  It began in Arkansas.  No, that is not quite accurate because it began before I went to Arkansas, but I only became aware of the shift in Arkansas.  It seems so long ago now, but of course it is not, merely 2 months.  Two months that seem in some ways like a whirlwind and in others like a lifetime.

 

My last day in Fayetteville was drizzly and gray.  I had hoped to visit at least one of the state parks we had camped at when I was a child.  But of course it was December and the parks were closed. Instead I walked around Lake Fayetteville, a little over 4 miles of paved trail around the lake, but I took detours, wandered at will, and walked slightly over 5 miles, returning to my car chilled and happy. 

 

It is amazing to me how going someplace else, someplace outside of your normal purview, brings you closer to yourself.  One stretches sides of oneself that get neglected in the routines of everyday life, and although it sounds completely banal to say so, the everyday and the extraordinary almost become transposed in an odd way that brings us closer to ourselves.  Strange that, the way that the place where we feel most at home, most secure, and I am a homebody if anything, is sometimes so secure that we lose some essential part of ourselves.

 

So there I was, walking in the cold, mid-40's drizzle, on a Sunday afternoon in early December.  I was a visitor to Northwest Arkansas.  I knew no one, although I would smile and chat with the few other walkers and bicyclists I would pass, and some part of me felt perfectly comfortable and safe.  Ostensibly, in a very real way, I was not.  I was a middle aged single woman on a wooded path in a mostly deserted space, a woman not from the area, whom no one knew, and no one knew where I was.  I have not forgotten this aspect of existence, and it is always present.  But if we think of it we become paralyzed. Although I don't believe I had ever been to Lake Fayetteville before, I had spent time in this area as a child.  The geology, the flora, the sense of the place was familiar to me and it felt like home.  Truthfully it felt like an echo of home, an imagining, because I haven't been in Northwest Arkansas in 43 or 44 years.  The people, the towns, the environment has changed; it is no longer the place I knew even though echoes of that place still exist.

 

As I thought about Arkansas, as I thought about how I'd love to go back and hike the trails I hiked as a child, explore the familiar places, I began to question myself.  Why is it, I wondered, do I feel more secure in a land of memory, in a land of fleeting familiarity, familiarity that is in fact an illusion, than in the place I currently live.  I don't go hiking in the Smokies, although I often think about doing so, and they are much closer to home.  Honestly I am no safer in Arkansas than at home, perhaps less safe.  What is it about memory, about personal history, about the illusion of knowing something that lulls us into false security?  And of course this got me thinking about home.  Why is it that we are willing to cling to something that we know is not right, just because it is familiar, rather than risk change?  I am just as prone to this as anyone else.

 

It was at this moment that I realized that I was ready to let go.  The house I live in is, in its own way, a chain, tying me to the past.  It was never intended to be a permanent space, we knew we might only be here temporarily.  Miriam's words echo in my mind, from before we moved:  "It is only a three-year grant" she said,  as well as my response "Three years is a lifetime for your father."   How prescient those words proved to be.  Not quite two years later he was gone. But I wasn't ready.  I needed time. Last summer I was still not ready.  The thought of moving made me sick, even though there was a house on the market I thought I potentially liked.  Then I painted the house, rearranged the furniture yet again, ostensibly getting it ready in advance, but also looking forward to enjoying this newly revitalized space for another year or so.  My intention was to begin looking for a new place in January 2018, a time that fit into my neatly organized plan:  I would make a decision about moving five years after George's death.  But as I walked around Lake Fayetteville, I realized I was ready to let go, ready to move on.

 

When I returned home I was chatting with a friend, and I mentioned this realization, this acceptance that I was ready to move forward to the next stage, that I have in fact built my own life and the only thing truly keeping me from fully occupying it required a very physical letting go of the old life.  I have changed this house; made it more mine, but the house itself was never "my" house, it was a place that fit a specific need, the needs of a dying George.  It was always a house of letting go and moving on, and now it is time to do just that.  I won't lose the past; it is a part of me always.  Our pasts are always wedded to who we are, but we don't have to be chained by them.  And so I will be moving.  I honestly don't know when yet.  But in the past few years I have built a life, my life, and now it is time to step into it fully.