14 Moves in 14 Years

I have just moved again, this time with my husband and unborn baby, which is certainly a first! I've never had so much stuff to move, and actually picked up so little, but that's the privilege (well, burden, if you're an Enneagram Two) of being 37 weeks pregnant. You just can't lift stuff very well at all. And climbing stairs!, a young man's game! 

Still, I've spent more energy on this move than any other, trying to think through what we'll need in Maryland, and what goes into storage, what can be discarded and how to discard it, what can be used by other friends for the time we're not using it -- months of decisions. I did a lot of the packing, but that didn't mean we avoided the scramble of the final week or the frenzy of the final two days. I'm so glad it's over, I cried. I'm so pregnant, I cried. 

Here's what I know about moving: with each new time or place, there are new rules and procedures. I note below that I moved back to Waynesboro twice after having lived there for most of my childhood. It wasn't moving back home, because as I've written about before, home is an unstable concept, hence the adage you can't go home again. Home is not geographical; it's anchored in relationships and expectations and maybe even resources. Each return to Waynesboro meant a different set of arrangements in the house, a different set of expectations from my family, and different ways of living. My bedroom moved from upstairs to nowhere to downstairs. Their style of eating together changed as my sisters grew up. Their way of allocating chores and responsibilities changed. Home changed. Then home became simply wherever my mom was. 

In Lancaster, I found a new place to call home. It became where my church family and friends were, the wider the circle, the better. Eventually this became too hard to manage, and I moved to Morocco seeking to pare down my relationships and my expectations for myself. What was God actually asking of me? How big was my family, after all? And where was home? In the last four years, God has reminded me to keep looking for home in his eternal body. Wherever he's being worshiped should feel like home to me. A gift within God's very big grace has been Jake. Jake has also become my home.

And now, the list.

 2006 

September: Waynesboro, PA to Harrisburg, PA

November: Harrisburg, PA to Tegucigalpa, Honduras

2007

April: Tegucigalpa, Honduras to Waynesboro, PA

August: Waynesboro, PA to Houghton, NY

December: Houghton, NY to Waynesboro, PA (I also "moved" to London, England for three months in here, but for the first time, I was absolutely sure I'd be moving back to Waynesboro, so I won't count it as a separate move.)

2008

August: Waynesboro, PA to Pine Street in Lancaster, PA (These were the happiest years I had in my life up to that point. Things have only gotten better, though.)

2010

June: Pine Street to College Avenue, both in Lancaster, PA (I also "moved" to Black Rock Retreat to be a camp counselor, but again, I was assured of a place again at College Avenue both summer of 2010 and 2011, so I won't count them as separate moves.)

2011

August: College Avenue to Lancaster Mennonite High School Dormitory

2014

June: From LMH Dorm to College Avenue

August: College Avenue to Plum Street (This move was because Joella was about to get married, and Carmen and I wanted to have Bethany as a housemate. Since Bethany owned her own place, it made sense to go to her.)

2016

August: Plum Street to Casablanca, Morocco

2018

August: Casablanca, Morocco to Plum Street (I moved out of Casablanca June 31st, and moved into Plum Street again in August, so I had one month as a houseguest in various places, though it was mainly Plum Street, where my friends endlessly made room for me, and invited me to rejoin.)

2019

July: Plum Street to Marietta Avenue (This was because I got married!)

2020 

August: Marietta Avenue to Granite, Maryland (This was because we can live with my in-laws rent-free for a year while I'm not working outside the home, because of our coming baby!)

3 Prayers: Desert, Ocean, Home

I dream of the desert

where winds sun stone

Red orange yellow--

blue purple black.

I dream of the desert

where breath catches slow

round swirls on the ground

every touch pays water of its own.

The desert does not dream of me

it knows what I can’t know,

and doesn’t care that I will never

be carefree indifferent windblown.

---

You are unmoved by me

unchanged by me

in you I see

my Creator

---

The cat is bathing herself

again.

Her snuffly breaths anchor me

with a sense of belonging:

this is right, to be at home of an evening,

cooking something, playing something,

straightening here and there,

and finally turning off lights, and bowing

face down, to say "thank you, God. Won't

you bring such security to the whole world?"

"God, may the young women have a moment to stop and think,

a space to breathe in.

"May the young men have a purpose they can believe in that

will earn their self-respect.

"May the old ones have families.

"May the young ones have dreams.

"May all have the food they need.

"Amen."

Thanks, Mom

Prompt: Indulge in nostalgia

I don't normally think about the positive things I associate with being a kid. My childhood is filled with half-gratified desires. I often think about how hard I had it. I always had questions that needed answering, and I longed to grow up so I could be taken seriously.

The library. As a child, my room had lots of picture books, and we were always at the library swapping them out. We rented movies from there, too, especially during the summer. I remember the first time I saw Princess Bride. My brother was skeptical that it was going to be "a girl movie" (ha!!). It should go without saying that we were both entirely satisfied by the viewing experience.

Midnight Snack. How it got started, I don't know. And it was never actually midnight when my mother indulged our young cravings for sweets. She put a few Graham crackers out with cups of milk. I became a pro Graham-dunker. Good job, Mom, on not giving us fruit snacks or candy at that hour. She knew nutrition, even if our babysitters were sometimes less than aware.

Reading to us.Why does no one read to me now? It's so comfortable and cozy to sit and listen to someone else's voice, on and on. As I rested my head on her side, I closed my eyes and heard her voice, swallowing my thoughts and spooning a thin layer of honey all over the world. She read to us before bed almost every night, when she wasn't working, of course, and she'd dismiss us to bed with, "first one to bed gets first hugs'n'kisses!" We scrambled for our rooms, and made such a fuss if she didn't judge correctly the "winner" of the game.

"Go outside and play." In my imperfect memory, Stephen always seemed to be outside with his friends, riding bike, or skateboarding, or playing street hockey, or... many other mysteries. None of my friends lived in town for a long time, so I confined myself to the yard, learned nothing there, and felt lonely. But at least I was outside, and so was Stephen, usually. Once, though, I recall he and Logan and Danny (together, the Three Musketeers, but without the noble intentions or code of honor) were playing in the basement. They were there for a long time, and finally came upstairs giggling. They had spray-painted their initials on a yellow, metal cabinet, long unused, in the tiny work room. The fumes had been getting to them, but they also thought that they were the cleverest little rascals to ever strategically spray paint their initials. The "LSD" cabinet remained in the house for a long time.

"Why don't you stay home tonight?" In high school, my mom would tell me that I couldn't go out, just because "you've already gone out three nights this week. It would be a good night to stay in." I so little understood how much my bitter, "But why?!" could have hurt her. My "why?" to the request to stay home implied so much: that I wanted to get away from her and the family, that I didn't think they were worth my time, that I had better things to do, better places to be, in short, that I didn't value my home community and consider it worth my contribution.

I wish more parents would tell their kids to stay in a few nights a week. When I tell it to dorm students, they are frustrated. They say things like, "It feels like I'm in prison!"; "I hate this place!"; "Why do you want to control me!?" But by the end of the year, they realize that the time they spent here was valuable. They wish they had spent more time getting to know the other students and advisers. They realize that this was their home for a while, and wish they had owned it more, contributed more.