Today is, I imagine, the last day of residential tranquility I will have for pretty much the rest of June. A week from today (yeah, that’s right, Friday night, I am a rockstar) I move from a little green house to a big blue house and I haven’t even started packing yet. Tomorrow I’m going to paint my new room blue with fluffy clouds and bring over all the boxes of stuff I haven’t opened since the last move, plus my old TV which I never use but may want some day, possibly. Even though I don’t watch TV. I’ll be boxing up the Fiesta Ware and some of the less ridiculous cooking implements, from back during the time I actually cooked and really needed a microplane grater for making homemade biscotti. Over this coming week I just have to pack up all the books and throw away the rest of everything I own and call it good.
It’s weird to say goodbye to this house. I’ve known I’m leaving for a couple of months but since I made that decision I haven’t thought about it much. I spent some of last weekend trying to get things cleaned up a little but I ended up being more social than I’d anticipated so everything is pretty much the way it’s been. Today really is the last day of non-chaos in that house; the kitchen is clean, my pictures are still on the walls, my closet is still full of clothes that need to be culled for Value Village. It’s calm and soothing and familiar there. Tomorrow is all about putting things in boxes and running around and getting covered in paint, but tonight it’s going to be gentle and normal and nice.
I love the way the summer light comes in through the window at 2:00 on a Sunday afternoon, the proximity of the lake, the weird satisfaction of weeding those horrible gigantic dandelions all in the herb garden, feeling comfortable inviting people into my space for the first time ever, seeing my kitchen stuff mingled with the kitchen stuff of my housemates, J.’s awesome dining room table with the bench, the cherry tree outside the window, how all our stuff goes together so well in the living room, hooking up my iPod to C.’s stereo and dancing around on the hardwood floors. I’ve loved things like Comfort Night and sitting around the kitchen talking about boys, coming home in the evenings to cool stillness only to have it be instantly ruined by Zeke the cat who hates me but loves me enough to cuddle with me sometimes, and just sort of pottering around, doing a little laundry, baking cookies or taking a bath in the weird tiny cannibal-pot Jacuzzi bathtub, from whence I discovered the best thing ever, which is to watch a movie on your laptop from the bath.
Mostly I love that this house came to me when I needed it very badly, and that it exceeded my expectations about what a physical space could mean internally. I love that I made a place for myself there, especially during the time when I felt there was no place for me in the world at all, and that I like the person I’ve started to become while living there. I hope I can take the gifts this house gave me to my next place and receive those that the new house has in store for me, too.