A Reunion and the Unpacking.

The last month has had me captive with moving and traveling and now home again, the tenth in ten years.  The boys and I traveled north for a writer’s conference and some writing time, not to mention the delight of friends, family and fall leaves. The intense stress and angst of the last few months, or maybe years, is skimming off of me for now.  I am brimming in fullness of rich conversation and sight, with still hardly any time to process. I would have liked to see my whole list of dear contacts, but there are only so much hours in the day… 

We flew out just two days after we moved, my mother-in-law flying in to keep Ben company and help with the setting up. It was the longest our little family had been separated. I wish you could have seen our reunion. The boys were in their new tree eating Popsicles. I was standing in front of the kitchen window, marveling at how I could have eaten breakfast in one part of the country, lunch in another and now supper in a new house. Henry the Explorer pulled around the corner and there was honking and shouts of “Daddy!” while dancing, jumping and running–arms and legs all colliding in a giant heap of boys in the driveway.  I caught myself running from the kitchen out the front door with a smile on my face like I was 19 again and we had been separated all summer break. My heart has not aged; just grown more layers. I was glad to know this again. We all stood there for awhile just to study faces like we had been thirsty for one another’s countenance and then walked arm in arm through the front door.  That is what it must be like to go Home, to greet and be greeted by all the ones you’ve loved and known.

Anyways, I am home now here. In a new place with boxes still crowding about and piles of papers and tools and the oddest ends that compose a household. Benjamin painted the walls while I was gone. I can’t tell you how deeply paint satisfies me.  The boys are peaceful in their Nordic Blue room, Anders now in a “big boy” twin bed, the toys all organized, the school books all in place.  We are getting back into the home-school grove while trying to get the rest of the house in order.  For recess we took a bike ride through our new neighborhood. We pedaled down streets where we had to just stop and smell, for it was the scent of Mexico and we wanted to melt into it (tortillas!).  We rode on with Lars shouting “The world is so full of a number of things, I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings!”   For a mother who so long wrestled with it’s validation, I am in a new place where there is no place I would rather be.  These days will soon be passed; I dare not miss their treasures.