Spring

Spring always pisses me off.

Winter is such a welcome retreat for this hideaway girl who loves nothing more than snuggling up in blankets with a steaming mug of something needing more honey.

Spring is a mix of bloom, renewal, and dusting off.  Unicorns and rainbows.  Gag.  As the weather warms up, all this blue sky fills me up with dread to work harder, try something different, push forward. 

I like the old stuff.  Nothing was wrong with our old rhythm.

We're moving soon.

We have twelve weeks to get out of here and on to new dirt.  Without official orders we have only rumors about where that dirt is located.  Rumors of this variety are typically true but I'm waiting for orders before selling our furniture.     

This is when I begin the mourning.

Last time, about twelve weeks before leaving our sweet neighborhood in Pennsylvania, I took a long drive to say goodbye to our old lives.  What began as a quick ice cream run to Sheetz ended up thirty minutes of intense therapy.   There wasn't one mile of it I wanted to forget.  I can remember driving past the Tiny Tots where I stuck Grayson in for a couple of weeks.  He cried like I was never coming back even though I only left him there for two hours a week.  His devastated sobs silenced by the front glass door still haunts me.  He hated that place.  I hated that place.  Nothing about it should've make me nostalgic but there I was, heaving heavy sighs into my Half-Bakes Ben & Jerry's as I drove past it.  Suddenly every inch of it became holy. 

After circling my tiny 5 mile radius, I drove the gamut.  I mourned for the wooded trail I ran on with my friend Blythe.  I felt sad for abandoning Shopper's Food Warehouse, Dairy Queen, and our favorite Mexican place.   Next to New, my favorite consignment shop where Grayson and pregnant I spent several of our most tender moments shopping for precious things and new baby onesies held its own time capsule of happy.  I grieved leaving Black Dog Cafe, Ollie's Garden Center, and Phoenixville Hospital, where both of our babies were born.  Marni, Vinnie, Cara, Andy...these people and these places defined our lives in Pennsylvania.  We had sewn each memory tightly together over our four years there. 

 There's an Abby in my belly.

 

Not quite 2 yo Grayson with our neighbor and dear friend, Vin.

It was hard to leave.

Now four years later, I can tell I'm starting my "goodbye drive" here in Northern Virginia.  I see my eclectic neighborhood streets through the eyes of a short timer.  Everything is holy. The daily trip down the same roads to our children's schools makes my jaw ache.  That dip, this turn, slowing down for that cop who sits right there at the bottom of that hill..  It's all going to be someone else's place to fall in love with.  Our time together here is almost over.  The fence surrounding our house that has stood sturdy as a moat for years suddenly seems pale and droopy to me now instead of staunch and proud.  Everything is starting to take on the hue of a memory. 

I am beginning to memorize all the things I don't want to forget:  Our 86 year old neighbors Jack and Eddie Lou's Sunday best in their driveway every weekend.  Hotpants across the street (her name I think is Sharon) leaving her tired old pit bull's leash on a mailbox while she finishes her run.  Mr. Ives waving to us from his garage.  The bazillion soccer kicks and football tosses in our back yard.  A lifetime of living.

 

 Easter egg hunts. 

                               

Surviving a 10 month deployment alone with a 4 and a 2 year old.  

That lopey fox ducking across the street like an exotic cat.  Our reliable backyard cardinal always brilliant through the bush when I look.  Jenna, my soul sister who just gets me for no reason in the world other than serendipity, oh how I will miss our "runs" where I make her walk really fast just so I can kvetch about everything and still breathe.  My preschool mom friends, these women who I cannot think of leaving without puddling up, they who have lifted me up every single day of my Virginia life.  I was very needy a couple of years ago.  My own family who I don't get to see often enough but feel closer to just because of geography.  Trader Joe's, Doodlehopper, Tillie, our hiking trails, my favorite lady at the McDonald's drive-thru, the always patient Dr. Henrickson. 

Damn you spring and all your plans of work and change.

 

This girl was really hoping for a few more weeks of easy winter.

Impatience

Try as I might to be patient, I am losing my mind waiting for my husband to get orders for our next move...which is to happen in less than five months.

Gah!  The control freak in me is absolutely short circuiting.

Unlike our last move from Pennsylvania, we haven't so much as had one whisper about where we're headed. 

Since we have to be out of this house before the kids' school year ends, I'm beside myself with trying to figure out schools, neighborhoods, husband commute time, etceTargeta.  Which, you know, is impossible without the actual state of residence to build into the equation..  Unless you just research ALL of the possibilities (there are four real possibilities now - two close by and two very much a plane ride) like a moron.

Hi, I'm a moron.

A moron who is trying not to drive her husband into a frenzy..

Our conversations used to go:

Him:  "Hi Honey.  How was your day?"

Me:  "Good, Grayson didn't go to the nurse today and Abby only ate half of....sooooo have you talked to the monitor today?  Do you know where we're headed?"

Him:  "Good, my day was good too, thanks for asking.  Babe, I will tell you when I hear anything.  I haven't heard one word yet.  Nobody has."

Which is true.  Very few of his fellow Marines have gotten orders yet so there are a bazillion families just like mine in limbo land, ready to seduce that monitor man with homemade lasagna, Dunkin Donuts gift cards, or inappropriate shower scrubbing.

Alas, we cannot bother the system even if the system bothers us.  Which is does.  It reallllly reeeaaallly does at this juncture.

To make sure I appear much more patient and understanding than I am, our conversations now go like this:

Him: "Hi Honey.  How was your day?"

Robot Me: "Good.  My day was good.  How was your day?"

Him:  "Ok.  I still have 2million and 4 pages to read on the Navajo..."

[Me boring holes through his soul with my anxious pressing eyes.]

Him:  "...Navajo warriors who were..."

[Me boring holes through his soul with anxious pressing eyes and pursed lips.]

Him:  "...who were...NO.  I did not hear from the monitor today.  What should we make for dinner?"

So even in character of patience, I am impatient and getting more agitated by the day.  Grayson accidentally dropped a heavy box on my ankle the other night and I reamed out the entire room of innocents for "making things so difficult," and "not understanding how hard that weight was."  Little did I know at the time, it wasn't Grayson I was talking to.

I think I was reaming out the Marine Corps.

Me:  "Sorry, Honey.  Tell me about the Navajo warriors again...  This time, I promise to listen."

Rooted

I told my husband I'm not going.

We don't really know where the military will send us yet (Desert Monitor wasn't very telling) but we do know it's either really close or pretty damn far.

I once was totally fine with pretty damn far but now I'm getting older and quite stubborn.  It also seems the older I get the harder it is for me to push our lives deep into the earth to make roots, water those twisty curls, prune them every so often when they threaten to strangle the mother tree, and nurture each underground vine long enough to see them evolve into a colony all their own. Its own life sustaining village.

I can't move my entire village.  My mom, step dad, uncle, and brothers (two of the four) live an hour or less away.  My childhood home (pictured above) is still within reach, my grandparents' final resting place is 15 minutes away.  Our children's friends, schools, dance studios, pediatricians, specialists, and favorite fishing holes are here. Target and Pho51 and SweetFrog will never live without me.  My network of mommy friends who have been my scaffolding, a beacon of wine and Triple Sec, the raison d'laugh and cry live here. 

So, I'm not going.  WE are not going.

Our roots have begun to spread, tendril out and dig down into the sticky, tacky, good dirt.  From where new things grow and thrive. 
 
Really damn far will just have to make an offer to some other family that wants great food, Cajun music, and sweltering heat. 

Cause this family is just fine planted here.