There is always an array of emotions that flood someone's system when the words "we're moving" pour out of a parents mouth. For myself, learning that my family was about to uproot their lives in Texas and move across the country, yet again, was no surprise to me. I have lived in two countries, slept several nights in seven different houses, and attended six different grade schools. So, I was excited for them to get to start up somewhere new and not worried since I was headed off to college and my brother had no trouble making friends.
They spent a majority of their summer getting ready for this move to South Carolina. While going through the motions of helping me move to Rhode Island early to live with my Grandma, to putting the house on the market to sell, to getting everything packed up and shipped off to the new house. Everything ran as smoothly as it every could, the lack of bumps in the path were mind blowing.
When the move-in day arrived, I sat on the front porch of our new home. I had spent the last three nights of my visit sleeping on the floor in an empty room and eating dinner off paper plates while sitting in folding chairs. I couldn't be happier with the arrival of all of our belongings.
Boxes and boxes and boxes of stuff came through our front door, getting dispersed into different rooms where it supposedly belonged. I watched these men, with pure muscle on their arms and legs, lift machinery that would leave a couple shattered bones if it ever fell onto me. They did it with such ease, although if you looked close enough you could see the beads of sweat that would slowly drip off the tips of their noses. We were walking through the house where my family would live for some odd amount of years, looking at everything that I hadn't seen in over a month created away from the eye.
It was finally time to start the evolution of unpacking. I sat in my new room, putting my old bed and bookshelf back together. Arranging boxes so I could push furniture up against walls and make everything feel like home again. I dug through boxes, finding objects that I had forgotten about and things that I didn't understand my reasoning for holding onto for so long. Trinkets and antiques I had used for decoration filled my mind with suppressed memories. Finally, I got everything put in a somewhat orderly and aesthetically enjoyable place.
As I sat on the floor of my brand new room, which I already knew was going to be used as a guest room after I departed to university, I thought about the fact that when you move around a lot, you do have to have the "home is where the heart is" mentality. I realized that I would never go back to a room that I had lived in for an extended period of time. It would always smell like someone else's perfume or shampoo. I was now just going to be considered a guest in a place filled with all my childhood belongings. I would most likely never see any of my high school friends again or fully know how to get to the nearest Target or Chipotle with my eyes shut. It was an eerie feeling, knowing that I would come back and see everything I owned but never feeling the right amount of belonging. That's the tough thing about having to move out of two different houses in one summer.
But I've learned a lot from moving so much as a kid and that is that opportunity comes and goes. If you don't grasp the chances that are presented to you, you will most likely regret it in the future. So the best thing to do is keep your head up and look on the bright side. Losing some leads to gaining more, and gaining is always a lot of fun.
