Moving Day

 That day is coming around finally.  Moving Day.  

I wrote today to my children...

There are many times in my life when I’ve been “on the cusp”.

You know…not actually totally in one place or time but moving onto something else…sort of “on the edge” of being or doing or moving from one place to another.  This is definitely one of those times.

It’s a very “human” thing to be on the cusp of something…as we are all making changes all the time.  

I think of it almost literally in terms of height or width.  Sometimes “the cusp” image makes me think of being up high, stepping carefully so as not to slip.  Or I image it as a wide place…as in a meadow with lots of high grasses so that you have to take your hands and make a path through them not really able to see the destination…just knowing you need to move in that direction with the sun at your back.  Like the prairie in Kendra’s beautiful Seno Nature Center.   

This morning at 7 am our home was encased in deep fog just before dawn broke.  Mysterious and quiet.  Like being on the cusp of day.  I could not even see the other side of the pond for awhile.  Then the sun broke on the horizon as the earth moved round it and the fog burned away in less than 15 minutes and a glorious blue and white sky appeared with gorgeous grass shadows and the beautiful reflections that come up on the tree trucks in a kind of revolving barber pole of shadows that move round and round the trunks reflected off the water.  This lasts for at least an hour until the sun’s angle changes.  

It is Thursday and the movers come Monday…4 days counting today.  

I live in a sea of cardboard boxes and will live in them at the other end too.

I hope to have a few moments to sketch some of them into my sketchbook today.  

It’s a “cusp” moment that I need to record.

In the cusp moments in the next 4 days we have to legally close on both houses, finish the packing, and load the car.  Then we prepare to go cross country into the midwest in mid-January that is quite a bit different than our usual May trip.

We had to add anti freeze to the windshield washer fluid and we bought a snow scraper.  

Through this trauma we are saying goodbye to friends we’ve made over the last 13 years we have lived here…going through a kind of “grieving process” which has passed denial now and is into a gentle ache of sadness.  

We really feel now that we are “living temporarily in someone else’s home”.  

Barely anything, except the view out the windows, is familiar.  Cupboards are bare and furniture is not where it used to sit if it’s here at all.  We are down to two chairs, two beds, a dining room table, a couple book cases and a file cabinet.  We plan to start over in Madison.  

I chose brown for the font today because I feel even the print should look different and muted.

Greg woke up with a big grin this morning and a cheerful laugh.

What would I do without him.  He makes me laugh too. 

Why not?  He is perennially cheerful about each new day.  

So I look for lots of “serendipity” moments in the next weeks as we close the door here the last time…leaving the pack of warranties and instructions on the counter and handing off the keys. Wending our way north with the sun on our backs.  

Remember that time is a spiral, not a straight line.  And so there are no corners to turn…just a gentle sweep into the next part of the story.  Stay tuned for the new chapters ahead.  

That sort of sums things up I think.   

The Final Two Weeks in Florida

Imagine my delight when a gorgeous bouquet of flowers arrived as a thank you from the Art Club!!!  So huge I had to divide it up into two lovely bouquets.  And it's lasted a long long time!  I was so pleased and surprised.  I am going to miss my tribe here at Hawthorne Park!  

One of the ways I've been keeping sane while packing up my life to move from Florida to Wisconsin in the middle of winter during a pandemic is to tangle.  Daughter, Beth, sent me gorgeous sparkling watercolors to play with so I've enjoyed incorporating those into my tangles too. 

And then there is Neurographic Line Drawing.  Sort of on the same quiet relaxing side as Zentangle.  It's suggested that the original lines be done with the non dominate hand.  That's kind of fun.  See instructions here if you'd like to try it out.  

We are 17 days and counting now until the moving truck shows up at our door.  The packing is coming along pretty well.  But there are always interruptions and issues and decisions and unexpected events.  

Our first buyers backed out!  THAT was a big one. But then it went back on the market and sold again in two days.  So that was helpful.

But now we have to go through inspection again!  Sigh.   The last minute events are now beginning to loom...things that just had to wait to the end. Next week is a big week for those kinds of things.  

We are watching the horrific storms charge across the mid west that makes us nervous too.  Our moving van will have to get through those and we will too, of course.  We expect to be "on the road" on January 19.  We'll keep in touch along the way.