Moving….On….!

Selling the house, moving out, moving on…. Wow…who am I?!!!  Well, back in “the day” this would have been no big deal!!!  But suddenly I’m living the reality that I have been in the same place for 28 years!  I still remember the first time I renewed my driver’s license and I was still residing at the same address!

Before I got married, I had moved often and rented lots of different types of places. From a “no bedroom” unit with a Murphy Bed that pulled out of the wall, 1 or 2 bedroom apartments, a teenie attic apartment on a fake 3rd floor of house, to half and/or full houses. I lived alone; I lived with roommates; I lived with my bestie forever Dianne on and off…which was for both of us I’m sure very trying at times, but for me now I can say that I’m am filled with loving memories of all the efforts and times and happenings we shared.

I moved to upstate to New York to marry and we rented a lovely 2 bedroom apartment in Ballston Spa, New York. I got pregnant and had my 1st child 9 months later. 4 months after that, the Navy packed us out and we moved to Scotland for 2 years!  Living all over the US in family basements, hotels and Navy Lodges while my husband wen to Navy “schools” for about 6 months before we and our household goods arrived in Scotland.  Well we arrived in January, 1988, but our household goods didn’t arrive until February of 1988.  PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: I do not recommend this sort of excursion with a newborn and no place to call “home” and no ability to haul around all the “stuff” you need with a baby in tow!  But, fortunately, Michael was a delightful baby, and I was 29 years old and didn’t know what a nightmare my vagabond ways were while I was certain I was blissfully in love and living the dream!  I had never done much travel before this, nor had I had children before, so ignorance truly is/was bliss!!!

9 months or so after arriving in Scotland, our second child, Kenneth was born. By then we had lived in a temporary B & B i n Scotland, and a new “house” on the economy which our landlord then sold and moved us “down the brie” to another  home that we remained in for about a year. Kenneth was premature; Michael was only 17 months old or so. And, due to issues around Kenneth’s “failure to thrive” diagnosis, which was as a result of a severe protein allergy, we had to come home when he was 4 months old, get him healthy and squared away, and when we brought him back to Scotland, the Navy moved us in to Navy Housing, until we were repositioned to Portsmouth Virginia where the Navy moved us twice again in the year or so we were there!  Then it was on to Mom’s basement, until the husband’s medical discharge and we bought the house I’m in now since November of 1990!

So, what was all that about…it was me rehashing a little about a lot that went on before I “stopped” moving!  I was very active as a mom, even with my full-time job. I tried to be very active as a wife and partner–although admittedly my vision of happy/successful house-wifing made me know I was a complete failure at that for sure! But I handled a lot; I volunteered in the community, in my children’s schools and classrooms, and choirs and bands and orchestras, in the youth soccer association, in the community food pantry, in the community theater, coordinating coed softball and soccer and entertaining and enjoying a full and active group of friends and family throughout.  And I was a totally present mom…probably not a perfect mom…but 100% PRESENT!

But now, well it’s time to do it…to move…out and on!  It took a while for me to figure that out.  I’m not “moving away” or trying to get rid of a past that I lived fully and thoroughly enjoyed. But I don’t totally identify with that past as much any more. I am fortunate that I still have most of the people and loving relationships, but I am a lot different now.  Sometimes I feel like I’m not a lot of fun! Sometimes I feel like I’m lonely. Sometimes I feel like I’m rediscovering someone I knew a long long time ago.  But most of the time I just feel “different” than who, what, where I was for the last 30ish years.

About 10 or 11 years ago I started taking 1 or 2 classes a CWRU where I work. I have loved this; a part of me always wanted to be a “college kid” but choices I made early on precluded this. I prioritized being “out on my own” back then…and was oblivious to the struggle that delaying this would be. The struggle was really just “my life”….a road I took, with lots of redirections, mistakes and a few excellent decisions as well.  Because, after all, isn’t that what life really IS?

This post got interrupted by a phone call from the Title Agency lady needing me to contact my 1st husband for a signature that she discovered was missing from the dissolution decree/quit claim deed!  Yeesh! Considering I have held a mortgage on the place in my own name for 7 years and my dissolution has been final for 6 years, that sort of shook me. But I made the call with her on the phone; and she will take care of that form here forward.  Re-ruffles a few feathers in me. But not like it would have several years ago. I took his $30K car into that mortgage in order to have total ownership in the house…a necessary step for my independence, but something that never sat well with me…signing on for 30 years paying for a vehicle he probably doesn’t even have any more!

Regardless of anything else, this move ends ALL THAT. The new title to the new place will have no remnants of anyone else but me attached to it. And filled with the hopes of new adventures and identities and directions and redirections, etc.  L’Chaim!