I moved house three times in the past 14 months. I am hoping the next move at the end of February will be the last for a long time. It’s an exciting prospect. The place I am in now (pictured above) is a fully furnished 150-year-old farmhouse tucked off the town’s main road, a safe haven for both my eldest daughter and myself to recover from a series of misadventures. It has served its purpose, but I am anxious to be in the newer, newly renovated and unfurnished rental so that I can surround myself with my personal belongings that have been stored this past year. 

Here there are benedictions everywhere. Our large, treed yard is a haven for birds, chipmunks, and squirrels, all of which are currently entertaining us at the two hanging feeders. In the summer, the yard was full of flowers and birdsong. Now, at the very end of December, birds of every color - gray and white juncoes, flashy blue jays, brilliant red cardinals, brown and white striped sparrows, rosy breasted finches and gray-brown doves peck at the scattered seed spilled on the ground by the perching birds and the feisty squirrels who rock the feeders with their acrobatics. The neighborhood cat appears now and then to disperse them all. He sits, puzzled, under the feeder, wondering where all his prey has gone.

Snow and ice are thick on the ground and the cold outside creeps inside through ill-fitting windows and doors. We keep snuggly throw blankets in every room, wear insulated slippers and several layers of clothing. Christmas has come and gone. We will dismantle the tree after New Year’s Day has passed, packing the tinsel, the baubles, and decorations away in their boxes ready for the move. Slowly, over the next two months, I will gather the items we’ve brought here to make it more homelike and replace them with the things that were here for our use - silverware, pots and pans, dishes. It’s amazing what one accumulates, even in a furnished let!

The wind is picking up as I write. Though it chills me, it feels somehow appropriate that the wind should blow just now. I need something at my back to push me forward through all the machinations of moving - sorting, packing, arranging for the movers, the flurry of small deliberate acts like alerting the Post Office, the DMV, and the numerous organizations that must be informed of our new address. I count up all the times I’ve moved in my nearly 80 years, totaling 15 moves over the past 60 years starting with a husband, a new baby, and not a stick of furniture! It is time to settle down again, to make a home in a new place, to find peace and safety in the company of family members and friends yet to be made. 

 

HOPE

Expecting to be settled as I aged and relaxed into retirement, I have been, instead, shuttling from one place to another, boxing up my belongings, depositing them in a storage unit, and moving three times in the past two years. I am temporarily occupying a 150-year-old farmhouse, that, in an odd twist, was once inhabited by a distant ancestor of whom I knew nothing until moving here and delving into the house’s history. The house is furnished so my personal bits remain in storage until I can find a more permanent home. It is a place where I can rest and recoup. I have fallen in love with the solitude, though I am not altogether alone.  

A mourning dove, sleek and slender with a long, narrow tail and feathers that appear painted on has built a rather tall, messy nest just under the roof line of the side porch. Untidy bits of twig, twine, and feathers droop over the edge of the capital that tops a supporting pillar. The bird squashes herself into the nest, her tail protruding from one side while her head ducks at an uncomfortable angle opposite. She watches me with one dark liquid eye as I climb the steps, broom in hand, to sweep the porch floor. Occasionally she flies to the rooftop of the small shed at the edge of the property or sits on a branch of the apple tree in the front yard. Most often I see her perched on the telephone wire that runs past the front of the house where she converses with friends who also cling to the wires and speak in low, plaintive tones. 

 There are other birds in the yard—robins, catbirds, cardinals, wrens, and a variety of finches—some of which will soon fly south as the days shorten and cool down. Blue jays and crows make most of the noise in the mornings now, the dove adding her mournful coo to the sunrise salute. They scatter when I open the door to the front porch to see and feel what the day is like. Mornings are cooler than they were a month ago, though on sunny days the daytime hours between ten a.m. and three in the afternoon are pleasantly warm. Crickets still chirp in the grass and the rabbits, so shy in the bright sunshine, hop out from the underbrush as I take my evening walk. 

There are numerous shade trees about the house, but I need walk just down the road to find open meadows that roll their green carpets to the edge of the woods. Deer feed there, and I know there are raccoons and most likely foxes about. There are bears, too, though I haven’t seen one, just a large pile of scat under an apple tree in a nearby orchard. I have no garden space of my own, so I’ve purchased a share in a local farm. Every week I choose from bins piled high with beets and carrots, spinach and chard and kale, sweet corn and tomatoes, filling a basket with produce and a canning jar with flowers I cut myself from their vast gardens. I am content to live in this quiet poem of a life for a while, teaching myself anew about patience, perseverance, and hope.

Piece of Cake

My beloved childhood home.

I used to live in a 9 room house and when it was sold, I moved to a three room apartment. There was a LOT of downsizing going on. Still, when I moved from that apartment to a two room garage apartment, I cleaned out some more. When I left there and came to my one room cottage, a goodly portion of my worldly goods had found homes elsewhere. Even so, because the cottage has very little storage room I had some things that just wouldn't fit. My landlord, B, graciously offered me space in his garage attic. There I store tubs of Christmas and other holiday decorations and a few odds and sods that I don't want to part with.

When Daughter moved from her single occupancy apartment to share a place with her boyfriend (a man who has a LOT of his own stuff), some of her belongings made their way into my attic space. I told her I'd hold them until she had a house and storage space of her own. This weekend the two of them are moving into their newly purchased house and I had to move her tubs and boxes and bags from the attic to my car. Sounds so easy when I type it out like that but I know from reading one too many do-it-yourself books that the written word makes any job sound deceptively simple.

The attic space is reached by a ladder. Any box or plastic storage tub that made its way up there did so with the help of two people, one kneeling on the attic floor and reaching down through the hole while the other hefted said box or tub up the ladder to meet the waiting hand. Taking things down was just as precarious. Because I have limited upper body strength, when anything needed to be moved up or down I have been the person at the bottom of the ladder. Using my knees for leverage, my shoulders for support and the ladder rungs as a ramp, I could slide things up. B, whose upper body strength is augmented by youth and constant exercise as he goes about his farm chores, would reach down and with one hand haul up whatever I was pushing on with all my might.

Today B was unavailable but his mother, J, whose own arm muscles allow her to toss around 40-lb. hay bales, offered to help. Up the ladder she went. Trouble was, I had to climb the ladder too, to help sort Daughter's boxes from my own. To my surprise, the ladder emerged through a hole just a tad smaller than the amount of space I take up. I had to put one knee on the attic floor and twist until I could ease my torso in sideways. Anyone with a garage attic knows there's only one place one can stand and that's directly under the ridge beam. All our boxes were stored under the eaves.

Armed with flashlights, we opened each box, sorting them out until all Daughter's belongings were moved close to the ladder hole and all mine were stored at the other end of the garage. Wet with sweat and back aching after bending over for half an hour, I crawled to the top of the ladder and knelt down. I felt with one foot for the top rung but when I moved to lower my second foot the leg was seized with a vicious cramp. I have a small reserve of words for just such occasions. I used every one before I reached the bottom of the ladder.

J dragged the first box to the hole and lowered it onto the top rungs of the ladder. I climbed back up half way and balancing the weight on my chest, I backed down slowly, letting the box slide until I could grab it with both hands. One after another the boxes came down until they were all lined up on the garage floor. J eased herself down, we loaded my car, then collapsed onto patio chairs with cups of tea, congratulating each other and breathing sighs of relief that we wouldn't have to brave that ladder again until Christmas (at which point I'll type the words, "piece of cake").

My little one room cottage.