heavy lifting

I firmly believe that you enter a time warp during a move. What has alternately felt like eons and mere days spent in moving only two miles miraculously seems to be coming to a close. It's been a long and not particularly interesting tale, but so completely absorbing and unsettling that I've not written other than to bore friends with the details. My new definition of a true friend: someone who tolerates your self-centered ramblings or at least has the sensitivity not to tell you that s/he's deleted your messages or consigned them to the Junk folder. So here I am again and glad to be back.

***

Moving ranks right up there on the stress scale yet I suspect that my angst was more evident to others -- I just kept my head down and reached for one more empty box. It wasn't far from the old place to the new so I opted for nearly daily runs between the two in hopes of limiting the final push to a few awkwardly heavy pieces. A dubious strategy, nonetheless it served to help me make an empty space my own quicker than otherwise possible.

I created new quiet corners in my soon-to-be-new-home to buffer me through sore muscles and other strains of changing zip codes and lifestyles. Early on I made sure that soothing comforts waited for me here after each carload I delivered. A comfy chair and ottoman, electric tea kettle at the ready, and classical music or blissful silence rewarded me for seemingly endless trips burdened with boxes of linens and bags of books.

Despite the extended labor, easing into -- rather than landing in -- the new space helped me make an emotional transition as well. Several weeks into the project, I decided to stay here and reverse-commute to finish clearing out the old apartment -- an action intended to bring me from what was to what will be, from then to now. I could start and end my busy days comfortably removed from the necessary chaos of increasingly empty cupboards, lonely hangers in suddenly ample closets, stark walls marred by nail holes, and circumstances out of my control.

The other day I flipped through Country Living magazine, pausing at the words of ceramics artist Joan Platt ("A Potter's Passion," March 2007), "Ceramics is a process and I love that each step is separated by stretches of time." I think, too, that moving is a process slyly masquerading as an event. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. Trouble is, the interminable middle is what takes the toll and offers little relief. Responding to an unconscious need for stretches of time and places of comfort throughout my...well, let's face it, moving is an ordeal, I'd been compelled to craft oases of physical and emotional calm. And that worked for me through the course of altered plans, patchwork schedules, and the to-be-expected unexpected.

I've noticed another barely perceptible shift in the past two days: I've begun to slow down enough to take in the sights, smells and sounds of my new surroundings. I've started to feel in sync with the rhythms of activity, the arrivals and departures, the ebb and flow of traffic outside, even the squirrel tackling my bird feeder in the backyard. Yesterday I explored the immediate neighborhood on foot and discovered a nursery around the corner. Garden-type, that is. The fragrance of early season pansies was a heady experience and a simple invitation to lay down some roots...to stay a while.