My New Reality

Charles and I flew in to Baltimore-Washington Airport on a redeye Wednesday morning. My dad picked us up at the airport in time for us to meet the moving guy delivering our four Relocubes to our house. No rest for the sleep-deprived and weary. Along with Allison and her boyfriend, we immediately began unloading the cubes and settling into our “new” house.

It’s a funny thing when moving into a house we’ve owned for seven years. I keep thinking this is just another trip. When people ask if I can do something in a couple of weeks, I quickly scan my mental calendar for my day of return to see if I’m even going to still be in this town. Uh, yes, yes I am. It’s difficult for me to make plans more than three weeks out because of this wall I’ve built. This is not home. This is where I visit and have fun and maybe work on the house and the yard. Not anymore. This IS home.

The house has been furnished with a mish mash of our own items, thrift store finds, and many items donated by anonymous friends of the family. While I very much appreciate all the generosity, we’ve been replacing many of those items with our own. Now that we are completely out of Bellevue, this house is finally starting to look and feel a little like it’s ours.

I’m a relative veteran to transition. Our last big move was in 1993 when we moved from Virginia to Washington. That was with a one-week-old baby, but we didn’t own much or have a big family. Though we left behind extended family, most of our friends had already settled in other areas. It was an opportunity that carried very little baggage and held little to no regret.

Now we are here – or I am. Peter returns to our condo in Redmond in a few weeks to spend another month there. We’ve begun our next stage of life together. I don’t know that our daily activities will involve children, education, or Little League, but they will be full of new opportunities for us to grow together and as individuals. It’s an opportunity to spend more time with our aging parents and our estranged friends and family. It’s not exactly a new beginning, but it’s a new adventure.

In this era of Facebook, blogs, and email, my hope is that my friends in the Northwest will remain my friends even as I develop new relationships close by in Maryland. This is uncharted territory for me, but I’m confident that it will work. I’m happy, sad, terrified, excited, frustrated, exhausted, and ready to go. Thank you for holding my hand as I jump off this cliff...