It’s always surprising when gratitude and delight feel so close to grief and overwhelm.
I’m lying in bed (the mattress is on the floor, the frame is still in its box on the deck) in my new house. My house. That I moved into today.
Friends helped me, and it went much faster than I’d expected, which was good because my drive and stamina went just as quickly: once all the obvious boxes and lamps and last-minute bags of clothes were moved… I was done. There are still dishes to wash, silverware to sort, and a freezer and fridge to pack up. But I have a couple days, so instead of doing any of that I took myself to the Angry Trout for a late lunch on the dock. Wild rice and salad with maple-mustard dressing, a maple soda, and a slice of kladdkaka to go. As I was waiting for a table someone I knew was leaving– she’d just bought her old house back and was celebrating, just like me. We’re almost neighbors, as this spread out county goes, and we made plans to walk sometime.
I picked up the cat, promised her the torturous car ride was almost over and she wasn’t going to die, tried to convince her to explore her new domain, and then let her hunker down on an old fur coat on a heap of laundry (or something, I really don’t remember what’s at the bottom of any piles anymore).
I followed her lead and napped myself. Ennis joined me. I have a vague memory of him possibly trying to talk to me or wake me up, and I know I vehemently turned off my alarm. When I woke up around 6:30, he was asleep next to me, and the cat was still snoring in the closet.
A quick trip to the co-op and we had sandwiches and blueberries and a little picnic at the coffee table (with Ennis perched on some rolled up rugs) because the actual table hasn’t been reassembled yet.
Showers (the 20 gallon water heater lasted far longer than I’d expected), bedtime reading, and a brief moment out in the dark, bare feet on the grass, bare skin to the air, and the rhubarb libation I’d promised a recent iteration of myself.
Now the hedgehog is running on her wheel in the next room. The cat is curled up next to my leg– something that hasn’t happened since mid-December. I don’t think she hates me, and I don’t think I’ll hate this. Which is to say, this is beautiful and hard and cluttered and full and brimming with potential and in no rush at all. And not anywhere close to done yet.
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