Think of it as a Picnic

I know that many of you are probably hoping to hear what it’s been like for the Bishop Coadjutor (can you tell if I spelled that right?) up in his new office, but it’s just too soon – and would also be too presumptuous – for me to comment on any of that activity from afar.   And, since we haven’t yet sold our current house or found a new one in New Hampshire, I am, in a way, “afar.”  But really, I’m just where I’ve been for the last eleven years: our home in Massachusetts.  It’s just that everything around me is shifting, spinning, changing so much that I’m not really sure where the heck I am.

I write this on our 22^nd wedding anniversary, and it’s weird that my husband and I are apart.  What’s been even weirder, though, over the past ten days, is that all three of our kids – including the one who’s not even in high school yet – have also flown the coop.  So it’s just been me, the dog (with a whole lot of vitality), and the house.   I include the inanimate structure here, because in the absence of everyone else who used to be up and down the stairs and eating at the counter, the place almost seems to stretch its limbs and start taking on a life of its own.  Or maybe that’s just my imagination.

Would it sound sacrilegious to say that there are, indeed, certain benefits to this arrangement , on a short-term basis of course?   If it weren’t for the fact that I need to keep readying the house for sale (a seemingly endless task) I could maybe even give myself a little space to enjoy the moments of solitude, to tend only to my own — and Rocky’s, maybe throwing in my students’ — needs for a while.   What, nobody needs to buy new shoes or get to a game an hour away? Supper can wait? No church functions to get dressed for?  What is this, anyway?

It strikes me during these different days that my upbringing, way back when, shaped me into someone who is deeply rooted in the concept of home base.  Not only did I grow up in a place where my grandparents had also lived, but the fact that our family did not go down to Main Street to church every Sunday probably added to my sense of home being only where it was – specific and inflexible.  For the clergyman who is my husband, on the other hand, home has perhaps always had a kind of dual nature:  where he lives with his family and where he worships with a congregation.  Now, of course, he doesn’t have just one congregation but many, so he will likely feel “at home” in a whole lot of locations, all over the state.  A big adjustment, to be sure.

Back here, I’m trying to figure out how best to 1) do regular, if pared down, daily life 2) find a new place with the right combination of elements to make it home and 3) finish preparing this home for the eyes of potential new buyers.  Towards that latter end, I had a “home stager” (who also happens to be a friend) come over the other evening.  Now, to be frank, this is something I never would have dreamed of doing a while back.  While it’s wonderful to have children who shine in performances on stage, I never thought that my house would need to get so completely primped and ready for viewers who may or may not want to applaud.

My husband, someone well-acquainted with hard work, did most of the “heavy lifting” while he was here.  Much has been packed, much painted, much repaired.  Now it’s up to me to go room-by-room and finish it off –-doing away with all remaining clutter, re-arranging furniture a bit, and making sure to remove any family pictures that could distract viewers from imagining how their own lives could flourish within these walls.

They don’t gain anything from seeing our son’s now dust-covered sports treasures on his dresser; I will put them away with care.

All the while, I can’t help but feel how much we seep into our surroundings.  We can’t help it, really, can we?  After all, much of the pleasure we feel in arriving back home is due to the fact of our having made it our home.  It’s about our things, partly, of course— but it’s more about wanting what’s deep inside us to have some reality outside of us, too.

So what I’m doing now, I guess, is folding everything – except for my family members, who have gone forth – back in for a time in order to make way to unfold it out again, no doubt differently, somewhere else.   Thinking of this process as a kind of a picnic operation — that ought to help get me through.  And I’m not likely to forget the bug spray, either, because we’re getting constant reminders about it during these lovely days of September.