Still moving
In the airport right after we had landed — a little late, and so very late at night GMT that every time we stopped moving, Helena laid down on the floor at our feet and went right to sleep — Ed said to me, won’t it be nice to get home.
Yes it would, I said, but we sold that house. Now we just have to go where our stuff is.
(Don’t tell me that I’m unnecessarily crabby about the move and that poor Ed doesn’t deserve my griping. One — I know that. And two, I crab very lovingly and apologetically.)
Now we are where our stuff is and it’s a little more like home. There are fewer boxes. I have walked to the farmer’s market and bought feta cheese from a chatty goat farmer named Dottie. Ed has been to work. The children have dug a large hole in the garden (to see what was there, naturally). The sense of living in someone else’s house is fading a bit, which makes waking up in the morning less strange.
While I am grateful for the lessening sense of alienation, I am unwilling to let go of my internal disruption just yet. I have been joking about having a mid-life crisis, but whatever name you call it, I am at a crossroads. The physical move perhaps hastened my arrival here, but I was coming to this mental intersection all along. The sense of unease I have is important to me now, because it is the fire that will keep me from setting up my rocking chair at the crossroads itself, instead of moving down a path.
There’s a bit in one of the OZ books where Dorothy arrives at a crossroads like a great wheel. And whenever she steps into the center of this crossroads, all the roads spin around her like a pinwheel, so that she’s not sure where she came from, or where she ought to be going. Meet my head.
So I am still moving. And will be even after the boxes are all unpacked and freecycled. I am moving because my younger self is giving way to an older self who needs to arrive, who needs to be welcomed. And I am sorting through my inner stuff, packing some of it away and cleaning off other bits, making ready the rooms, laying the table. I want to be ready to move on, to not hold fast to what is fading.
I am not sure where I’m going, only that I must must go there.
Hi Francesca,
Rachael here (formerly CrankMama) we did that show together with Kristen a few months back.
Let’s start a club of women going through a midlife crisis… I admire your honesty and courage in the face of all these changes… particularly your determination to go there anyway.
This is a very similar place that I stood four years ago when I moved from upstate NY to Ohio. It was terrible and unnerving and I had no idea where I was or had been or might be headed. It’s better now, but it took some time and some work. I still don’t much like Ohio.
so…some more hugs!
That is an incredible image. I must go find it to see how it turns out.
It takes patience to make it through uncertain uncomfortable times. That’s why I knit and eat (too much) chocolate. And read blogs looking for kindred spirits. Hugs and good thoughts.
be kind to yourself. you’ll make it through this transition.
I was lol at what you said to your husband- I would have said that but not in a loving or apologetic crabby way
I hear you! It can be confusing and at times frustrating, but just remember to keep moving, so you don’t lock up.
Me too…
Nice work Frandolia – glad to see the years haven’t diminished your talent for objective and detached reasoning, or disturbed the deicate equilibrium of your inner being. Probably.
A x
I admire your courage.
Listen to Don McLean singing Crossroads.
Keep writing about your gutwrenching thoughts & feelings, I really think it helps. And it is surprising how many people out here in cyberland know how you feel.
Hugs.
You know, I went through what I called a midlife crisis last year, the start of which coincidentally timed with a move. It was a Big Move, like yours, and even though I wanted to make it, it was still Big and upheaving. After a few months, and some therapy, it subsided.
But then, I just moved again this weekend, another Big Move, this one both wanted and not (I loved my old place), so I expect the next phase of my crisis to begin, right about…. now.