Moving Day goes well, surprisingly so. We have the help of two friends for a handful of hours in the early afternoon. Ralph is the most amazing mover, ever, so we finish in one day – besides a few odds and ends that will easily fit in a car trip when we venture back to clean (I look forward to doing this after my hands have healed from their present state to normal – I’ve been doing a lot of cleaning today). This move goes far better than the last. I am pleased to see wheras the last time we needed a 22′ truck, this time all our possessions easily fit in a 15′.
I’m feeling better as my throat has healed a bit, which is wonderful. Most of my time today was spent in cooking and providing food, cleaning up the downstairs of my mother’s house, and installing our food, clothes, sewing and music gear (our kitchen and the kids’ toys are going into storage). My mother has a lot of things; hence, lots of dusting, almost everywhere, relentless. I come across the occasional cruel reminder of my father’s absence – while moving the clock that has sat unwound for twenty years, a note in his handwriting falls to the floor. I realize he never even saw me move into our last place. I feel the distance growing between us. I miss him so much, it’s hard to believe that is a permanent part of me now, missing him.
But despite the fact I’m moving into my childhood home the navelgazing exercises are at a minumum. I am performing my own nesting rituals as my daughter plays outside and this is calming me perfectly. At dinner time my mother and her boyfriend show up for a homemade vegetable alphabet soup accompanied by farl. The kids have been joyous and helpful most of the day, helping a little, but mostly playing – a lot. Everyone’s so hungry they’re praising the soup like crazy. It feels good to work so hard and then get to eat good food.
After a long day it’s 10:30 and Ralph and I realize we’d like to A. get to our old house to retrieve the two Mercedes and B. get a bottle of wine. Something big, and red. We have the pickup truck and it seats only three. We ask Sophie if she’d like to stay behind given as she’s enthralled in the murder of a cardboard box. She says yes, grimly sawing with a huge knife. I tell her, “Don’t cut yourself, and if you do just go upstairs and tell David and Jenny.”
We leave and drive to pick up the cars. I can’t help it, I must flip on the lights and walk through this shell of a house that only last night hosted business as usual for our family. Back to the yellow car and Ralph has loaded Nels inside, who’s in his underwear and holding something large and shadowy, like a spear. “What do you have?” I ask him. He leans toward me and answers, both his words and his fragrant breath illuminating me: “Scarlet runner bean.” He grabs a few more to bring some to Sophie – when he’s alone he never avails himself of something special without thinking of her – then back to the car.
When I get home with The Boy, my daughter has carefully placed all the shredded cardboard detrietus in an empty box; she’s created a “lizard puppet”, a shell she can crawl in. She’s cut the “belly” out of the box, leaving two pieces on the sides as arms that drag on the ground, complete with pointed claws. A tail cut out of the top of the box and an eye-hole in the front. She demonstrates; Nels begs for a box of his own.
11 PM on the day we moved and the kids are still ready to party. Ralph arrives with the bottle of wine and I slowly, slowly slide my shoes off – the best feeling I’ve had yet today.