Adventures in Re-Location

The drive with the two cats wasn’t so bad, though my car is now making a funny noise and smells like a belt is rubbing on something. Easy to get fixed. I could tell I was getting home when I traded crepe myrtle for sumac in northern Oklahoma. But that was only half-way, and then came the Ozarks, and the trees doubled in height, and color.

Unpacking took forever. There was no Fabulous Crew of Friends as in Dallas, where loading up only took two hours thanks to y’all. The crates had to be left at my brother’s house in town because the county is rebuilding a bridge just north of my house, the road is Closed No Kidding and the bottom of our drive is getting pretty mushy in all the rain, so no eighteen wheeler was getting in here. So, back and forth with the van, and back and forth, and now my entire kitchen in on a shelf in the top of the barn. Which, is fun. How Hemingway got the box with the mixer and the blender up there, I will never know, but he did it.

The Ps were wildly helpful, and very gentle about the whole thing. They’ve done this a few times before. For a few days there, they said that I looked at lost as lost could be, like not even myself at all. Hollow, they said. So, Fabian’s saying is true, when you move a long distance, it takes about three days for your soul to catch up and find you again. It does. I was in this torrent of organizing, of not knowing where things were (like this box of shirts that hid from me for a few days), and working to make my old world fit somehow into my new one. And you could tell by my handwriting. When I’m thinking of someone, a grandmother, dad, whoever in my family, my handwriting takes on some of their style. For a few days there, it was all over the map, looking like my bother’s mostly, and then Grandma’s or Dad’s. Pretty nuts. Now, it’s mine again. But it’s been ten days. And the cats went bats, of course, so I was constantly pretty worried for them. I was, in short, a wreck. But, I also knew that I could ride that out.

Now, the desk and writing projects are organized. I’ve relearned my way around town (lots of new roads). The ‘brary at the uni will let me use their facilities gratis, including the databases. Sacred Grounds is the coffee shop where I’ll do a good bit of my work, since I really will have to get out the house, for everyone’s sake, and so that the writing is a Job and all that. So, that’s going to work well.

The books are under the guestroom beds. So, if you come visit, watch you do stub a toe on them.
The cats are adjusting, and Goofus needs a new name. I’m calling him Goofus the Conquerer. He’s allllllll about checking out the house, the decks. Last night he laid himself down in the middle of the upstairs hall like he’d been there all his life. Plume, surprisingly, is slower. She’s following G by about a day. I expect her to get upstairs tonight. But, they have not yet the dogs. So, that will some fresh stress for them in about a week.

But don’t get me wrong. This is both the smartest and scariest thing I have ever done. It’s as easy as it can be in the worldly ways, but spiritually, this is the leap, this is the jump into myself that we all have to take, and there is nothing easy, beautiful though it is, about that.

For all the moments of doubt, or simply trying to orient myself to what I've done, I feel stronger here, thicker and more real somehow. So, that, that energy/condition will make this as right as it is.