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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

good eyes

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