We did the thing. We moved. Looking from the outside in one would say we were trendy - doing what all the cool guys were doing - moving to the country, buying a farm, maybe some chickens and a goat. No chickens in our story but we did migrate North to Vermont. My only defense is that I grew up here. This is my home and something we have been gnawing at since before the Pandemic. The Pandemic, if anything, gave us the permission we were looking for to make this leap. So we did the thing.
We know from studies that moving is one of the most stressful things one can go through, second to losing someone, I believe. So why is it always so surprising when one moves that we experience all the hard feels? The grief, loss, anger, stress, resentment. For me, the shock resides in the fact that we made this choice. We decided to move. We wanted this. The shock comes from the duality of emotions - I know in my knowing that this is right, that this is the path for my family and yet I thought with the knowing I would be able to side step the hard. Nope. Universe begs to differ, the hard is a necessary part of the knowing. It makes the experience more complex, richer...harder - more real and therefore more meaningful?
I am still in the middle of that question.
We began the move in June....scratch that, the move began the moment my husband received a job offer from Burlington High School back in April. In June we packed the boxes in to a large truck and said good bye to Boston. The move began the moment we looked at one another and said, "Yes." It was fast. A Tuesday offer with a Thursday acceptance and a new house by the following Monday. No wonder I am still trying to catch my breath.
This move is an interesting one for many reasons but in particular because I was leaving a home to move back to a home.
Home?
Vermont is my home that I haven't lived in for over twenty years. It is a home deeply wrapped in old chapters and childhood memories, holidays and visits to Papa and Deedee's. Home here is not yet a present experience - it currently exists in the past. So I ask, what the heck is home? How do we, you, I define home? Create home? I am living in this crazy dimension where though I am "home" I am terribly homesick. And in truth, I am not homesick for what was but what will be. I am waiting for home.
For now, as we often ask ourselves in the hard moments, I will sit with the feelings of homesickness and be with them. Keep them company and hold them with tenderness as I continue to ponder and wonder and build, waiting for home to appear.
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