I have been living in my new house for just over a week and it already feels settled. True only the ambiance is settled, I still have boxes of to sort, a contractor to find, a dump run to make – I’ve got a mountain of stuff to do and yet a calm has befallen me and I’m feeling something I haven’t felt in earnest for a long time – happy.
This move has felt like coming home in more than a physical sense – I feel like I have come back to myself. I think I’ve been gone for longer than I realized, this sensation of feeling almost whole is familiar and yet brand new.
It’s March again – the dreaded month of memories I’d sooner forget. Black memories. March has become something of a reckoning month for me, the month when the music must be faced. Three years ago March marked the birth of the widow. Two years ago March was all about leaving home and facing my tomorrows alone. Last year March changed the whole damn world and announced a pandemic.
This year it feels like March is turning a corner. Maybe the dreaded month is tired of dark changes – maybe this year March would like to announce spring and a homecoming. Maybe March wants to turn the tide.
The speed at which I have settled into this next chapter is almost unsettling.
This neighborhood has a feel to it – most of the houses were built when they didn’t need to clear cut the trees in order to pave the road. We have two giant cedars in the backyard – they’ve been rooted here for more than a hundred years and stand like sentries overlooking a creek that has been running for longer than that. The trees whisper conversations they’ve had with the ones still standing in my old backyard a block and a half away. The creek babbles memories about little kids who had adventures on its shores.
But it’s more than the neighborhood and the memories making me feel at home – I think perhaps I have come to terms.
The condo didn’t have a hope of being my happy place – it was the home of grief and changes I didn’t want to make – it was the home of letting go. I needed to sit in that quiet place to find out who I was going to become. It took almost three years to find me – but I finally feel like I might be back.