Postcards from the Imagination

Earlier I said, "There are good things ahead, to be sure, but..." Why the apology?

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I haven't figured out yet how to prepare myself for this. It doesn't feel as though I'm leaving my home behind in five days. The brown couch. The green chair. The milk crate coffee table. All these things I've lived with so long stay behind. 

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Coming with me: student desk, writing desk, file cabinet, 4 small bookshelves, some kitchen items,  shower curtain + hooks, desk lamp, stereo, bicycle, guitar, books, clothes. There's the wine-colored bookshelf I built by hand out of scrap lumber from my mother's attic five years ago. There's the easel with the picture I painted. The other day my daughter told me she missed the mural I'd done on her playroom wall when she was toddler. She's leaving a life behind too.

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In six years she's attended four elementary schools. I don't win mother of the year for this. There are sacrifices I could have made to stay in one place, and there were good reasons to do so, and there were good reasons to leave, and despite the import of the decisions I've made, I won't ever know whether they were the right ones or not. Rootage is a great neutral concept. So much depends on what you find yourself rooted to.

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The local supermarket is setting aside boxes for me to pick up later today. Maybe then it will start to feel real. I want it to feel real. J's dad is coming to pick her up Saturday and take her down to his place for the summer. I don't want to wake up alone here Sunday morning and feel the full weight of it for the first time. Five state-to-staters in seven years, and I still haven't figured out how it's done.

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Earlier I said, "There are good things ahead, to be sure, but..." I apologized. Because this isn't a poem or a photograph or fiction or a film & on Sunday morning I will wake up 32.  

(to be continued...)