Goodbye, little apartment

We landed in a fairly anonymous, random apartment after moving across the country in December 2019. I was very pregnant, David was soon starting a new job, and several times we made the long drive from my mom’s house, where we were crashing, to our new city, to search apartments. There is nothing quite like visiting the city you’re moving to in heavy sleet while seven months pregnant. It felt very dismal, and after several apartments, we chose a rather bland one in a suburb. It didn’t have a washer & dryer (my “number one” requirement), but it had lovely windows with views of trees, it had two bathrooms (a luxury!), it was a ten-minute drive to David’s new office, and it had a bright, open living and dining area. Beige carpets and white walls, yes, but we were tired and it felt safe.

A year and a half later, we have purchased our first home — a wee bungalow — the same square footage as the apartment, but only one (very small) bathroom. However, it has many things our apartment does not have : storage in abundance (basement + attic!), a very nice washing machine and dryer, a wee backyard (complete with a slide, a gift from David’s parents for our daughter), a third bedroom/office, a larger kitchen, 1920s-era charm, hardwood floors, and a walkable, friendly, urban neighborhood. In one week, the moving van comes, and our beds and bookshelves and that old butcher-block table from my childhood apartment will be schlepped to the new house.

Here, in this old apartment, we have been safe. In the early days of pandemic — inconveniently (and traumatically) for us also the early days of our daughter’s life — we felt secured from the dangerous world. We let packages sit on the steps of our second-floor apartment for days before we opened them, lest they be carrying virus germs. We checked the deadbolt before bed, ensuring nothing could come inside. We were warm on that bland beige carpet, and we gazed out at the trees through the big windows. It is a sleepy complex, but every day we watched an older gentleman walk his chocolate lab on the lawn. We watched neighbors hurrying from their cars to their doors or vice-versa. We saw a fox several days in a row, and most days we saw rabbits and deer and squirrels.

One of David’s most wonderful qualities is his ability to find magic and joy wherever he lands, and he certainly did that here — but I think we also stumbled upon a pretty special place. It will stay, sparkling, in our memories forever — our daughter’s first home, a soft gentle place to survive a difficult year.

wherever I’m with you

The last time I made a post here was April 2, 2019 — almost a full year ago! By April 2, 2020, we will (God willing) have a newborn baby with us, in our new home in central New York. David and I have never been very good at staying put but we’ve made a pact to stay in this location for at least two years (ooh).

Right now, I have been living in our new apartment for about four days. It is still primarily a city of boxes, but we have carved out areas of sanity : the master bathroom, the corner of the living room, the table, the galley kitchen. I brought my beloved pothos plant, Hestia, all the way from Idaho. She traveled wrapped in newspaper in a carry-on suitcase and I repotted her when we arrived at my mom’s house for Christmas. As I write this I can see her on the table beside me — she is flourishing! Travel and moving evidently comes fairly easily to Hestia — all she needed was fresh soil and a few big drinks of water and she perked right up.

I’m not sure that’s quite as true of me, although certainly big drinks of water are helping. All of these transitions at once, though : it’s a lot. I quit my job in December and don’t know when I’ll return to work, or whether I’ll return to my field (counseling) or branch out into something new. We moved across the country, and meanwhile I’ve been growing us a baby who is expected to arrive sometime in March. My body, home, and vocation have all been dramatically changed in the past several months.

I think all this change may be why some of the unpacking has been so comforting. There may be a lot of change, but many of our beloved items are the same, and they feel like an anchor : the colorful blocks I took from my father’s office after he died, the set of coasters that looks like a sheep that my friend Ruth brought us from Ireland, photo books from our past travels, the quilt made from fabric scraps from years of Grammie’s sewing. These things have moved with us many times and each time we unwrap them from bubble wrap or old t-shirts and cardboard boxes, it is a bit like seeing a friend or a familiar patch of land.

I wonder if David and I will ever be “rooted.” Our origin is in travel : we met while studying abroad in Germany. We grew up on opposite sides of the country, and we’ve already lived together in several states in our five years of marriage. Sometimes we fantasize about how it might feel to stay somewhere for ten years or some other incredibly long time. No matter where we live, we’ll always be far from some part of our hearts.

It’s corny, but Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros kind of hit the nail on the head when it comes to how I feel about David :

Home, let me go home — home is wherever I’m with you…

Life in the West

We moved to Idaho in June and have spent the summer alternating between settling in and traveling on weekends! We were able to head out to Washington two times to spend time with David’s family, and we also had the pleasure of hosting David’s sister & her husband, and later, David’s parents. We also spent a super fun weekend in Los Angeles for our friends’ wedding, so all in all, it’s been a pretty busy summer! Yesterday, we kicked off the fall season with a day-long Hogwarts Express Day celebration.

Life in Idaho has been a real adjustment, and I’m sure there’s plenty more adjusting to be done. But there are many lovely things about our life here : our apartment is in the most perfect location. Our next-door neighbor is super kind and helpful. My best friend Lindsey lives in town (!!!) so we get to hang out ALL THE TIME, which after years of always being in a long-distance friendship is pretty awesome. David is doing well at his new job. And I have access to bazillions of beautiful, hilly running trails. During summer I ran usually six days a week, but I’ve just begun training for a half-marathon in October, and I’m running three days a week and lifting weights three days (plus one rest day). I miss my trails, though, so I often add a long walk on lifting days. (Sometimes I add a long walk on running days, too.)

hot air balloons from the hills on a recent run

hills from a run

our apartment

I’m working on navigating the counseling licensure system here, and in the meantime just housewife-ing to my best ability. Cooking, cleaning, you know. Recently, I’m most proud of my frozen bean-and-cheese burritos that David can take to work for lunch, crockpot steak fajitas, and the “sorting hat” cupcakes I baked for our party yesterday. I’ve also had plenty of time to read and get to know the local public library system.

in Hogsmeade!

Sorting Hat Cupcakes

moving again

When David & I moved in with my mom last summer before traveling abroad, we had a goal : we would enjoy time with my mother, dog, and hometown, and by the spring, we would move again.

Here we are in May and we just finished packing up our “moving pod.” Next week we will start our 2500 mile drive to our new home in Idaho. David got a great job out there in the data analysis field, so we’re headed west again!

Our time in New York has been so special to me. We’ve gotten to spend lots of quality time with my mother (and with Pip the Kerry Blue Terrier!), and being in my home environment has been so nourishing. I love my childhood house and I love the wood paths nearby, where I’ve run or walked daily. I still dream that someday we will settle in New England, but for now, this job opportunity for David was too good to pass up. We’ll enjoy being close to David’s family and my extended family and friends on the west coast, too.

We found a sweet little apartment with the help of my best friend Lindsey who lives in Idaho (another perk of moving!!), and we’ll be setting up house out there in early June. Maybe I’ll get back into writing a bit more often again (how often do I say that?). Lots on my mind lately : slow/sustainable fashion, baking, how to make a new place home…but lots to DO as well, like, you know, moving across the entire country.

the world awaiting

We are in a strange phase, David and I. I have one week (one! week!) left at my job, and the apartment is becoming more and more a moving zone of cardboard boxes and plastic totes. We sold two bookshelves and they were picked up yesterday, leaving empty rectangular spots where they used to live. Early next week, David will drive the car, packed full of artwork and other fragile or precious belongings, to my mother’s house. He’ll fly back to Indiana to finish packing up our home, and then we will have one last weekend here. A last workday, a few farewell dinners, and we’ll be rolling out of town in a rented moving truck together, waving goodbye to our relationship’s “hometown.” I am zig-zagging between exhilaration at the future — like standing on a cliff at the ocean, feeling the breeze on my face — and grief at the ending of this special chapter. One moment I am imagining our travels, hardly able to wait until we leave, and the next I’m in tears, reminiscing about the wonderful friends we’ve made here and the many little places around town that have become our homes.

On the horizon waits a whirlwind gift of a trip. We’ve been writing our “top three” priorities for the many cities we’ll visit, trying to make sure we don’t over-pack our itinerary. We’re trying to make sure we don’t over-pack our bags, either : allowed just 22 pounds each on the airplane, we’ll be carrying everything we bring on our backs. (Look for an upcoming post where I show everything I’m bringing! It’s been fun to carefully plan this.) I don’t even know what we, or our lives, will look like in August. We have plans for a slow fall — David will have nothing to do but his dissertation, and I’m hoping to focus on a variety of projects, including taking a course in making organizational printables and starting a wee etsy shop for a little income. I’ll go help my best friend Lindsey get settle in her new home in Idaho, and we’ll make our way even further west for some time with David’s family.

The summer and fall seasons are going to be such opposites, and contain so much variety. In the last few years, our lives have felt very routine. David has continued to do all his “student things.” Teaching, writing, learning. Once I started working as an advocate at a rape crisis center/domestic violence shelter, things settled down into a rhythm. Given that my job doesn’t have any holidays or breaks (unlike school), we rarely traveled. I worked Monday through Friday, on Saturdays I ran and we did fun things, and on Sundays, we went to church. The rhythm became sweeter with time, and although we have loved it, I think it will be exciting to break completely out of that pattern and into something very, very different. A summer of constant change, motion, and new life. A fall of quiet, finishing up projects (in David’s case, his doctoral dissertation), and bedding down. These patterns match the seasons, and feel appropriate for that reason. When is summer not a season of frenetic energy, or change, of life? When is fall not a time for tying up loose ends, bedding down — preparing for winter?

Living out this new rhythm will bring change — and that brings challenge (for me at least) — but I am hopeful that with constant reflection and plenty of self-care, I will be okay. Maybe even great. 🙂

these happy golden years

Two more weeks in the City of Bloomington, where David and I have shared the vast majority of our relationship. The city of our first date, our first kiss, our first shared home. The city where we got engaged, where we both earned master’s degrees, and where I had my first full-time job.

I am looking through hundreds of photos, trying to cobble together a photo album of our four years in Bloomington. And as I look through these photos, I’m reminded of one of the things I love most about David, one of his qualities that made me fall for him in the first place: his ability to find life and joy in anything, anywhere. Understand that this isn’t an intentional quality. This isn’t David thinking, “well this is pretty crummy, how can I make it special?” This is just David’s eyes, and how they see.

These are photos of us where we got a take-out pizza and sat on the hillside of a middle school, watching the sunset over budget apartment buildings and pawn shops and a run-down bowling alley. To a cynic, we were eating crappy food on a dirty, littered hill looking out at run-down buildings on an impoverished side of town. David didn’t see that. He saw a picnic on a grassy hillside, watching the sun set.

There we are that first summer, reading magazines in the library to enjoy the free air-conditioning. Cuddling with puppies at the smelly pet store in the mall. Splashing through a tunnel (overpass) in a (paved) creek. Day after day of beautiful moments that he created for us out of his grad student stipend, his creativity, and a good eye for beauty. The public pool became a private oasis, the back bedroom (with a laptop on a chair), a dinner theatre.

This ability of David’s, to see the world as beautiful and interesting and exciting in every situation, is one that has helped us through so many days. I know that wherever we end up settling next, I will be leaning in beside him to see our new home through his eyes.

(Where are we going? Well, here’s the answer!)