Moving Truth

Moving.

I hear the word and a deluge of vivid adjectives and fierce emotions course through my veins. Most of the words I’m not allowed to say in front of my children, but I do anyway and that’s a different blog on “parenting advice” I will never write. I’ve moved a lot. Oh no, not as a child. My parents still live in the house I grew up in. The same childhood bedroom (less the Bon Jovi posters) is mine when I go “home” to visit. That house represents 20 kinds of an awesome childhood with the ghost of Christmas past haunting the two attics and the same sharp smell of Dad’s oily “shop” where the entire world could be fixed with one can of WD-40.

As an adult, I have lived, shall we say, a bit of a less “stable” life. As a married woman (almost 18 years), I have moved 16 times. Combining both single girl and married girl moves, my grand total bumps to 25. Now, we can go into detail about each of those moves. We can talk about the times I moved alone with one suitcase and a lot of hope or when I was pregnant with two toddlers in tow or when I had to leave a job I loved or had to leave friends I loved even more or when I had to leave an ocean for a city or a city for an ocean or had to leave hot to cold or cold to hot or withdraw kids from schools or withdraw my heart from the clutches of comfort. We can know I did all of this with nobody dragging me by my blonde ponytail- I’m a grown-ass woman who made choices. We can also distinctly note a majority of these moves were made with financial stability and the privileges of being a white woman with resources.

So with disclaimers noted, we are not going to talk about any of the above items. I would simply like to impart some truth to those women (and I know you are out there) who may be facing a similar soul-crushing pattern of moving with a family or even just facing one really big awful, juicy move. Ready?

No, you aren’t. Because that is truth #1…….

1. You will never be ready. And, breathe, my darling, because here is where we get real.  EVERY SINGLE FRIEND OR RELATIVE YOU KNOW will ask with toothy smiles and hopeful eyes and a weird, tinny quality to their voice which will make you want to throw hard things at them: “So, are you ready for the big move?”

Are you kidding me? I have slept 2.5 hours in the last 7 weeks, my teenage daughter won’t stop crying, my husband is texting wondering if I have filled out the inventory sheets yet (sure, honey, let me get right on that just after I make a hearty dinner of 1 can of kidney beans and stale Vanilla Oreos since I’m trying not to fill our half-packed kitchen with too many groceries), 3 of the 4 kids have turned into some post-apocalyptic iPad zombies whose greatest fear in life is what hour the internet will be disconnected, I haven’t changed our address yet via the United States Postal Service because I don’t actually want to, the dog is stressed out and therefore eating weird shit outside and barfing it up in the kitchen, the “good-bye” hugs and stopovers are sending me into some form of twitchy depression, the gaping holes in the walls need to be filled so I don’t lose my deposit and my car needs servicing before I load the children and the dog into it and drive them 20 hours to their new home.

So, no. I’m not ready. You are not ready. You won’t ever be ready. Just know that, surrender to it and keep doing one more little thing to shift you, even just the teeniest little bit, in the direction of “ready”. I love you. Life is a journey. Hahahaha- they will say that, too. Don’t throw a roll of packing paper at their head because all they meant to say was they love you, too.

2. “It takes a village!” Yep. It does. But guess what? You won’t have one. For a long time. You will be alone, in a new house or condo or RV or whatever with 8 giant baby eyes staring at you wondering what on God’s green Earth they are supposed to do today because you chose to move in the middle of summer when all of the “local kids” seem to have evaporated into thin air. And now you have to act like a camp counselor who wants to go to the zoo even though you hate zoos but you are a pillar of positivity and the zoo would be fun! So you chug as much coffee as possible, leave behind the anxiety-inducing disorganized rooms in your new home, load up your kids into the car you never had serviced and drive them through hot city traffic to the zoo. And once there, you notice your entire family is dressed like circus folk (I actually love circus people and potentially may be joining one) because no one knows where their actual clothes are. All of the animals have disappeared, too, because it’s 90 degrees and they are smarter than you and have slunk into the shade and told their cubs to chill out and leave Mommy alone before she does something she regrets with her claws.

Then you look a little closer at Mama Lion, in the corner, in the shade with her monstrous paws cushioning her giant, heavy tired Mama head and her tail whisking away the toad-sized flies of the North (she’s multitasking, of course, because she’s a WOMAN) and she cracks an eye and you just know she is looking directly at you like she’s been waiting for you to arrive. She’s wise and strong and bored and slightly resentful, just like you. But she whispers with her steely lioness eye a little message of motherly love: “It’s all right, babe, you showed up anyway, albeit in circus clothes, you showed up. I’ll be your village for today. Now get out of this sun and into some shade.”

And, once back at ground zero (new house), as you are unloading your sweaty, cranky 5-year-old from your clown car and checking your email on your phone at the same time (multitasking), you receive an email from a new neighbor asking you and your troupe of freaks over for Friday night.

Your village will show up, too. They’ve been waiting for you. Promise.

3. Everything you ever thought you knew about relationships, spouses, parenting, your own personal vices, and simply “living” will be unpacked in a giant steaming pile of sh*t on your brand new living room floor. You can throw those dishes into the cupboards at record speed, organize those 4,000 stuffed animals (you swore you had donated those little jerks) into a cozy pile in the play area and hang each shirt on a black, velvet Costco hanger (color-coded, of course) like a freaking HGTV organization specialist. Yep. You can do that, and that is commendable. Well done. But then……..

Booze pour very easily. Careful there, my love. Call me if you need me. The kids fall apart and stop eating everything they once ate, and you can’t find the grocery store anyway at which point I recommend prayer and pizza and 8 episodes straight of Queer Eye on Netflix. You need new car insurance and a new dentist and your spouse doesn’t think of these things because he/she is trying to find the forks as he/she has not eaten real food in two weeks and brain cells have started to die. Your best friend doesn’t live 2 miles away anymore. I’m so sorry. I mean that more than you could ever know. And worse than all of the issues laid bare on your floor is the weight of knowing you MUST find a “way” here, a new way, a different way, maybe better, maybe not, it doesn’t matter, you just have to find a “way”.  For yourself. For your family. And you will. Me saying it won’t make it easier. People asking “how are you liking it?” will bring you to gasping, throat-clenching tears. But you will find your way. Time, more patience than you’ve ever known and self-care (the bubble bath kind, not the booze kind). This is your only way “home”.

Listen, my gorgeous gypsy friends, moving is pretty much the Hunger Games. Do you remember the scene where the tributes from each district are sent into the arena via moving glass tube? They leave finger kisses on the glass to the people they love as they slowly ascend into a completely unknown (and horrifying) new world designed to kill them. In the movie, there is a moment, a breathless pause before the starting fog horn sounds (this would be the moment your car pulls into the driveway of your new home), where each tribute is frozen except for the blinking and adjusting of their eyes to the sun. Each is desperately deciphering friend, foe, weaponry, exit plans and winning strategy. Once the horn sounds, everybody runs. They full-on dead sprint to slaughter each other with machetes and grab supply packs just as an arrow pierces one of their backs. Some high-tail it to the woods in terror (that’s your introvert kid) and others clammer together in a sort of sloppy group of five in hopes to find connection before they meet their death (that’s your extrovert kid).

But here is the best news, that scene only lasts for 2 minutes of that 2 hour 22 minute movie, and no one in your family is going to get an arrow to the back (unless you’ve moved back in time to medieval days in which case I can’t help you). The babies calm down and find their flow, mundane details get sorted, meals get made, school registration papers get filed and therapists can be visited if you need them. Most importantly, nobody dies, promise.

You will be ready when you are ready. It might be two years after you arrive, but no one is holding a stopwatch.

Find the shade and rest, you beautiful clown. Your people are out there.

Watch out for the nasty voice in your head. Trust me, she will show up. Hear her and acknowledge her and then smother her with un-donated stuffies. Don’t machete yourself before you even get started.

I love you.

And may the odds be ever in your favor………xoxoxoxoxoxoxo