Update or What I Did Over Summer Vacation...

Another year, another city. What did I do this summer? Well, in addition to having an absolutely wonderful summer with friends and family in Atlanta, and finally beginning to settle in and feel like I was at home, we also moved to Chicago. In the middle of August, we found out that Gordon would be starting a new job on September 7th. And off we went into the middle of the country, with only enough time to hire movers and wave goodbye on our way out of town. No processing. No emotional impact. Safer that way. So I’m waiting patiently for it to hit me. Wondering if it will, when it will. Some days I think it doesn’t matter one iota where I live, and some days I know for certain that I will miss people and moments so much it hurts once I finally face the fact that I’m in a new city. For now it feels like vacation. I’m still living out of a suitcase, figuring out where things go, no idea where the closest dry cleaner is.

And, in many ways, even when on vacation, my days are always the same. They’re days of blankies and bandaids, spiderman and pots-and-pans-orchestras: filled with the magic of childhood and littered with the debris that accompanies it. We spend our days at the playgrounds or going for walks around the neighborhood. My life is constant in that it still revolves around the two little blond heads in my double stroller.

For now, I’m content. And whether that is me not having processed anything, or me just taking one little step at a time—waiting patiently for nap times and bed times and first glasses of wine (hooray for 5 o’clock!)—here in Chicago just as I did in Atlanta and in San Francisco before that, I am glad that I am still standing, still smiling, still just me. Gordon’s words are coming back to me again: “wherever you go, there you are.”

Here I am.

Coming Home

Home. Over the past year this word has become a puzzle to me. Something I've tugged at and stretched and picked at, trying desperately to unravel it. To make it cover me where I am. To make my home where I am. Ode to a snail--who carries his home on his back. But we are not snails. We are yard sales of miscellany and collected bits. We overflow into storage rooms and walk-in-closets and corners of basements. Our things proliferate. But even the metaphor of home--even the intangible feeling of what makes us glow inside, what brings a flush to the cheeks--even this is difficult to cultivate and carry.

I'm thinking about Home a lot right now because we've moved again. A spur-of-the-moment move half-way across the country. And we're back in an apartment, and walking everywhere. We're in a city again. I love it. I miss other things. I wonder, as I did less than a year and half ago when I moved to Atlanta, what it's all about. Who I am when I physically move myself to a different space. I'm at the intersection of space and "the now." It's just as confusing and mystifying as the intersection of space and memory. These are the Shibuyas of emotional import.

What makes me who I am? What makes me ok being who I am, where I am. Why is it so difficult for us to be in a new environment--even if it's better? We are creatures of habit I suppose. Especially me. Give me a warm seat and a good book and I won't move til it's done. I could eat the same thing for breakfast lunch and dinner for weeks at a time. And now I'm in Chicago and Gordon works all day and I still haven't gotten myself out of boxes.

I find myself paralyzed. Unable to DO anything. All I want is to sink myself into something that will consume me and take me completely away from here.

And yet.

And yet.

"And yet all the while you are you, you are not me.
And I am I, I am never you.
How awfully distinct and far off from each other's being we are!

Yet I am glad.
I am so glad there is always you beyond my scope,
Something that stands over,
Something I shall never be,
That I shall always wonder over, and wait for,
Look for like the breath of life as long as I live,
Still waiting for you, however old you are, and I am,
I shall always wonder over you, and look for you.

And you will always be with me.
I shall never cease to be filled with newness,
Having you near me."

D.H. Lawrence, "Wedlock"