All right, all right. A few eagle-eyed commenters that don’t like to play by the rules have revealed the true meaning behind the clues. And while traveling to exotic locales, zombie hunting and selling hippie children to fund world saving endeavors were all very, very close, the truth is that we’re moving across town. (Kind of anticlimactic, huh? Wait ’til I break the news that I don’t actually have the right to give away Paris.)

Well, it might not be world ending or life changing for you, but for me it’s been a pretty big dealio. Our current house and I have had our disagreements from time to time, but this has been my kids’ childhood home. They were 6, 4 and 2 when we moved in here, and now they’re 15, 12 and 10. Sure, they still have some growing to do, but no one is toddling about anymore. This was it, this was the place where all that happened. Lost teeth, bicycles without training wheels, summers swimming in the backyard, scribbles on the walls when Mom wasn’t looking, birthday parties and memorials, too – we did eight years of growing here. Leaving it behind is breaking my heart a little.

I’m going to continue to be a bit sketchy with the details because (for a blogger) I know how to be discreet, but you can’t really know how this all came down inside my head without knowing that less than a month ago moving was the farthest thing from our minds. This was an entirely unexpected turn of events, and also, I need to add, not due to anything we’ve done. We are rockstar renters. You wish you could be as good as we are at renting. But circumstances did what they sometimes do, and we had to make some changes accordingly. And rather quickly.

Luckily we did, however, almost immediately stumble across something that feels like a perfect fit. In fact, the new place has even more living space than our current house does, and in an arrangement that feels like it will suit our needs much better. Like anything, there are trade-offs, but luckily it seems like everything we’re having to give up are things that I didn’t really like having all that much anyway.

Once we have the keys and I can take some real pictures I’m sure I’ll be talking new apartment here very soon. Right now, though, all is chaos and boxes. I’m actually crazy proud of us and what we’ve accomplished around here in such a short period of time. Even in a rush we’ve sorted through everything – and that is 2 car garage worth of everything, tucked away by a husband whose super power is getting a ton of things to fit in places where, by all that is natural and holy, they should never be able to fit.

This is the corner where everything that we’re taking with us goes.

This is the corner for all the things that will go into the garage sale.

It’s been difficult, though, the worst by far being the several nights I spent sorting through boxes of things that belonged to my father. Things we tucked away 8 years ago in anticipation of a day when I would feel strong enough to deal with them. The irony is that a year ago I could’ve sorted through all of it pretty easily, but now that Mom is gone, too, it’s all become poignant and painful and terribly heavy again. The love letters and greeting cards were hard to take, of course (Dad, hoarder at heart, kept every single greeting card he ever received. I, child of a hoarder, was compelled to sort through every last one.) But probably the most painful of all was a completely random post-it note pad. Half-used, the top-most sheet had a note in my mother’s handwriting promising a quick return from a jaunt to Safeway. Something about just how ordinary everyday it is seems to be what makes it so sad.

This is another thing that marks this house, our time here has been book-ended by deaths. Dad died two months after we moved in, Mom died 10 months before we left. Our new apartment will be the first place I’ll live that neither will see.

I’m 38 years old today, and continuing to do the best that I can. I think this fresh start will be a beautiful thing, and I’m excited to begin the next stage of my life. But, like any change that’s worthwhile, it hurts like hell, too. I would probably curl up in a little ball if I thought about it too much, but right now? I have too much packing to do.

My daughter is out and about in the world without me this week. I’m happy as always to see her trying her wings away from home, but missing her as always, too. It’s a nice hurt, though, nicer than I’ve been used to feeling.

Just a growing pain.

She is twelve now, the door to her room
closed, telephone cord trailing the hallway
in tight curls. I stand at the dryer, listening
through the thin wall between us, her voice
rising and falling as she describes her new life.
Static flies in brief blue stars from her socks,
her hairbrush in the morning. Her silver braces
shine inside the velvet case of her mouth.
Her grades rise and fall, her friends call
or they don’t, her dog chews her new shoes
to a canvas pulp. Some days she opens her door
and musk rises from the long crease in her bed,
fills the dim hall. She grabs a denim coat
and drags the floor. Dust swirls in gold eddies
behind her. She walks through the house, a goddess,
each window pulsing with summer. Outside,
the boys wait for her teeth to straighten.
They have a vibrant patience.
When she steps onto the front porch, sun shimmies
through the tips of her hair, the V of her legs,
fans out like wings under her arms
as she raises them and waves. Goodbye, Goodbye.
Then she turns to go, folds up
all that light in her arms like a blanket
and takes it with her.