moved

1.27.03
Balancing the book Bitter Waters: Life and Work In Stalin's Russia on my head and whimpering my feeble request to my mother in the next room. My hands rest empty in my lap and I am surrounded by six cardboard boxes full of books and, by my calculated estimations, about 13 boxes left to pack still on the bookshelves. 'Can we move these to the new house?' I ask, pointing to the shelves. 'Loree - they're built in', she states pointedly as if I didn't already know they are screwed to the walls and ceiling. Can't we still move them?
I look at the bare green walls marred only by my brown messenger bag hanging on a porcelain hook. My violin case leans up against my brothers bedroom door and a trash bag against that. Strangely the bag is filled with high school graduations cards - I only kept three, papers, poems and art from the past few years. Memories are nicer than memorabilia - they only take up space in your mind instead of your closet.
A tenor belts out Latin words I do not understand downstairs and I hear the Malibu's engine start. I smell evergreen and there is the usual apple scent our home retains. Benjamin's baby monitor hums and I hear him sigh in his sleep. I find a pewter plate bearing my name as the 1997 winner of the Clover Leaf award. How important that highest honor was when I won it. How much dust it now gathers sitting in a box, unlooked at, unthought of for five years. There is a scratch on that antique mirror behind my door. Is it even my mirror anymore, even though I know that scratch better than anyone? Every door in my house sounds completely different than any other. I know all of their sounds. Only one of the floorboards in the hallway squeaks loudly; don't walk on that one. There are six and seven foot icicles hanging off our eaves, but it is thawing out and all around I hear them crashing down to the porch and the sunroom roof. There is an earring on my nightstand; it's not mine. I don't even wear those Birkenstocks very much anymore. Have I ever worn that sweater? Thanks Preston for letting me have the basket - I really do like it. There is a rainbow colored slinky on my floor and a bottle with cranberry juice beside it.
I am moving.
I take Bitter Waters: Life and Work In Stalin's Russia off my head. It's hard enough to balance one thing without trying to manage two.

8.28.03
My cross country saddle is astride the back of the couch and the living room smells of genuine leather and the light scent of horsehair.
The oil painting of a poppy rests against the wall in preparation for storage.
Black permanent marker stains my fingers, remnants of all the block writing I've done on numerous boxes for the past few weeks.
Thirty or so boxes are stacked in a corner of a friends attic. Things I won't see for a long time, things I won't need where I'm going. Things I probably don't need anyway.
I gave my hanging ivy to a friend. I don't think they'll make the plane ride sufficiently.
Our house isn't ours anymore and it's become cold and distant.
I hug my sweatshirt hood closer up around my neck and move on.

12.27.03
So this, my last night in this home, is waning.
The dining room is filled with the laughter which accompanies the typical card games. This family room is filled with family, reuniting and conversing. My bedroom is packed. A suitcase sitting, full, on the hardwood floor, neighbored by a book bag and camera case. My worldly possessions. The things which will help a new home feel like an old home. I leave tomorrow after church. I will walk out the door and drive away, fly away and land in a new place. And I'm not sure why my stomach hurts. Why my head hurts. Why my heart hurts.
Good-bye.

6.12.04
"You don't feel quite at home yet, do you?" he questioned me. I had to admit the thing that had presented itself last week and made itself more at home in me than I am in the place I call home. No. I don't feel at home yet. I'm not sure why. Perhaps the changes make it obvious. More likely I make it obvious. I'm still me; underneath the six months of change and difference, it's still me you see.
Unfortunately. I had hoped it would be more Jesus you could see and less me.
We are all moved in.

2.4.05
Today, tonight.
So another door closes. Another threshold left. They stand next to my bed tonight and say they'll miss the three of us in this room. We've made memories; thankfully. Memories are fun, but they aren't enough to propel us ahead. And so I packed my car today, and tomorrow. Full, once again, of books and hardly anything else. Moving out, moving in.
Never a dull moment when you claim the discipleship of Christ.
But, for the first time in two years of moving and shaking, I'm excited about what the future holds. The expectation is different this time around.

cheating on choser

I always promise to write and then never do. Sometimes I think it must reflect my lack of commitment or some such other psychobabble, that you must think I'm a horrible, horrible person for saying I'll write and never doing so. Not because you miss my writing but because I didn't make good on my commitment.

But what you didnt know is that I have been writing. I've been writing papers and emails and scribbling post-it notes for my roommate and making a general mess of black pilot precise pen on my hand, which doubles as a mobile post-it note. This morning, with five notes written on my hand, in no particular order:

Satterly 116 [office of Education]
Danny's check [to be deposited]
36-14-** [my locker combination, which I can never remember]
LC1003.N87 [Dewey's decimal helping out]
Josh's B [call him, he's the big ONE-O today]

I never thought twice about the scribbling there until my Philosophy exam this morning. Suddenly Danny's check and my locker combination seemed to be glaringly obvious and perfectly incriminating – especially as Dr. Tartaglia circled the room in search of cheaters-cheaters. I wanted to shout out in my defense, but instead just put my hand under the table and pressed on through postulates of determinism in science.

yearly

This time last year:

February 2 2004

so i'm ready to confess. tell all. let it all spill.

i miss home. i miss it desperately. i miss it more than i have ever missed or loved anything before.

i miss my church. i miss my church family. i miss my dad. i miss my mom. i miss my best friends in the world. the daily emails from them keep my head above water. i missed the death of my brothers dog the week i came, and i don't even like dogs. i miss italian water ice and i miss fugi apples.

i miss worshiping in a corporate setting. sometimes i dream about it. i miss hearing my pastor exhort. i miss my friendship clubhouse kids. i miss the church offices, cold and energizing. i miss home, with all it's realities of life and shaping of character.

i miss driving. i miss the fields. i miss chai. i miss joshua's birthday tomorrow and i miss three more birthdays this month. i miss hearing the piano practiced all day. i miss black beans the way we make them. i miss sleepytime tea and i miss the two friends who liked it best with me. i miss julia in the front room, her hair falling over her forehead. i miss merrick and i miss that thing you do. i miss aaron learning to read. i miss benji dancing to riverdance.

i miss our joint quiet times. i miss hossmer hall and a grand piano. i miss five hundred blue chairs and only me sitting in them. i miss you playing that grand piano. i miss you.

i miss sergies pizza and marks apartment. i miss ryan being in potsdam and i miss danny coming over for pasta. i miss being hugged by claire and i miss sitting on louissa's bed. i miss talking to carina in the bathroom and even miss the banging of the washer against my bedroom wall.

i miss poker games in the kitchen and joe and rachel. i miss being scum all the time. and i miss jamie.

i miss laughing really hard about something and not having to re-explain it very slowly. i miss not being watched very closely. i miss my doc martens and i miss blueberry muffins.

but i don't think i'd miss out on this opportunity for the world.

And now, a year later, I find the only thing I was truly missing was the Lord.