*packing up

I wrote this sometime last week before we left and am just posting it now. I will say that we are excited for this next little chapter and are so thankful we have this option to live here near family with so much help while Ben works to get a university job. It's just hard :(

 

....... sigh. I don't even know where to start.  

I just hate moving, I hate ripping up the roots that you've let grow, breaking up the little community you made for yourself. I can picture every major move I've made: driving away towards college - seeing through my tears my dad and Tamara waving from the driveway on Iris Street, flying away from La Plata just when things had settled and it felt like home, driving away from Tacoma just devastated and sad that we could never recreate our life as college students, coming home to Tamara and I's lonely apartment after she'd left, driving away from San Diego with Ben - he driving my old Saab in front of me on the 395 - excited but unbelieving that my life as a single unit was over.  Following Ben and the Uhaul out of Missoula, completely blinded by my tears but comforted with my last Big Dipper milkshake :)  I just can't wait for the day we know [as well as you can, I guess] that we are going to stay in a place. 

This move is particularly hard. Like really hard. I haven't lived anywhere this long since my childhood home and there's just something about where your babies are born, the relationships not only you make but that they do too!  It definitely took us a couple years to really feel happy here, to really love it.  I am just so grateful for the amazing friendships we did make and it freaking KILLS me that we are leaving.  Like when you pull up a tomato plant and there is a ton of resistance and then you hear the roots breaking and popping - that's what I feel like.  I know perfectly well we will see our friends as often as we can and that we will maintain our friendships - those are the kind of friends we make.  

I just keep mourning that these routines and habits and this little home won't exist anymore as it does now.  The view from our kitchen table of Tia's, the walk to the park, Vera running down to Graham's house when we see them out front and just what awesome neighbors they are, riding bikes to our amazing library, Tuesdays at Jack and Fifi's house, long long mornings spent at Sam and Mimi's, Red Butte Gardens with them too, Ben staking out the meth house or the maybe-brothel across the street [haha I won't miss that but it's true! don't tell potential buyers...], his midnight walks with Boone to the park, the walk up from "our" parking spot at church, our wonderful pastors and the familiar caring faces there, Vera holding Jack's hand on the way to Sunday School, my brother stopping by on his lunch break, his kids' birthday dinners, the walk to Coffee Garden, Tia. Oh my goodness I just think about Tia and our friendship with her and how much the girls love her and the tears just start streaming.  Or the twins and their mama who I could already tell was a kindred spirit long before they were all born. Yep there have been a lot of tears.

There's a lot more to say... [I was too tired at the time to finish that thought!]

 

I could NOT take these pictures down that Vera had put up on all the doors to decorate, too sad.

...or my little clothesline downstairs where I randomly put up pictures or cards or things that inspired.  The picture of Vera from Rock Creek, the little dried flowers Matty collected in Park City after her baptism.  I tried to take them down before Tahoe to get ready for the listing and just couldn't do it either.