Get the Shovel

It has been a long time since I played the dating game, but some things you never forget.  Like the breakups.  For weeks…or months…after the split, the places we frequented, the shows we liked to watch, even the music on the radio was somehow marked by the significant other’s absence.  And in that absence, everything looked, sounded, and felt…different.

James compared this moving process to a long, slow breakup with our hometown, and it is.  Instead of ripping the band-aid off, we have lived through two months of “lasts.”  Our last trip to the zoo before our membership expired.  Our last Cincinnati Opening Day.  Our last Flying Pig Marathon.  So. Many. Lasts.  When you live somewhere for a long time, you don’t realize how deep and complicated your roots are until you rip them out.  Just this morning, I drove through town, like I do every morning after I drop Caleb and Violet off at daycare.  I glanced at the empty space in the front window of a realtor’s office, empty space that is home to an elaborate train display every Christmas season.  The boys stalk the train display, from the first signs of set-up, to the night of the Holiday Walk, to the day it is taken down and packed away again.  We won’t be here to see the train display next Christmas.  We had no inkling of that when we munched on cookies and watched the train puff smoke as it flew down the track last Christmas.  How can that go on without us?  How can we go on without these myriad traditions that almost accidentally shaped our family? 

I know new adventures await.  Good adventures.  There are trains in North Carolina, and Christmas will come to our new state, too.  There are parks and zoos and museums.  We grew our roots around these places, these traditions, these friends almost without thinking about it; I imagine the same will happen in our new home. But in the meantime, there’s the pain of transplant, of tearing our happy, content selves out of their native soil.

After a break-up, there’s a point where you reclaim all those things that you shared and make them part of the new you.  We haven’t even left yet, but I’m trying to reclaim our sense of who we are, what we do, and where we belong without this happy little town we’ve been blessed to inhabit.  Because we are more than the place that defines us. 

Get the shovel.  It’s time to go.

(Also, we still haven’t found a house in North Carolina.  Please pray that God provides the right house for us when we visit this weekend, because I’m not sure how long my mom can handle our crew in her house.)