The Waiting

The mountain of boxes in my dining room grows by the day – just when I think I’m getting a handle on this packing shit I open another cupboard and am reminded again that I am, and have always been, a bit of a hoarder. Some of the things I’ve been so carefully packing haven’t seen daylight since they were unpacked two years ago. These are things I couldn’t bear to part with when I boxed up my life those months ago, the cream of a crop that spanned forty years – they are the special things I brought with me and then neglected the instant I found a place for them to wait for whatever was going to happen next.

And then we waited.

I’ve spent a lot of time during the past two years waiting – for what I’m not sure. At first I thought I was waiting to settle into the condo and my new life at the beach. I was still waiting long after I was settled. I waited for summer and then Christmas and a new year in which I would wait some more.

And then the pandemic hit and I wondered if that’s what I’d been waiting for – maybe I’d been waiting to hibernate, so I did. I dug into my new digs, pulled back from the world and started to wait in earnest. Wait for a new normal. Wait for the vaccine. Wait for my turn. Wait.

I think the waiting might soon be over. With every box I pack the mountain in the dining room grows taller and part of me grows lighter. This is not an unhappy move. It’s been a bit dark and a lot lonely here in my waiting but even as I held fast to that waiting a brighter day was on its way.

I’m not foolish enough to think I will walk out of this door and straight into that brighter day – it will take time and work to truly welcome it. I’m ready to make the effort …. now I just have to wait for the move.