Just skip this one.

Nine months now, since we've come here. Enough time to have conceived, carried and birthed a child. In that respect, it seems like a considerable amount of time. In the comparison of years, it seems ridiculously small.

My thoughts less and less frequently turn to home. At least not with sorrow and missing. And, I'm proud(ish) to say that I no longer think of our old house with a sense of panic and sudden, intense grief and loss. That's how it felt in those first few months here...intense, sudden grief and panic upon the continuous realization that This. Is. Permanent. Very close to how it feels when you lose someone you love. Grief...knowing I've forever lost something in which a part of my soul resides. And Panic...that sudden swelling of internal movement up from your small intestine and ending in your throat, which says omilordno. And knowing there's no going back. I'm ashamed to say this, knowing full well how it feels to lose a loved one...and also knowing full well that it is so hurtful to compare a house with a person. And yet because I hold both experiences inside me, I can honestly find a similarity in those first tiny moments of realization. The irony of this does not escape me.

Those of you who have lost know that those "realizations" sneak up on you, and they happen over and over again...as if you didn't quite get it the first time around. Which, given the circumstances, perhaps you didn't. To those of you who haven't experience close loss...I'm so happy for you but there is no way I can ever explain this. This is something you have to learn through experience.

It seems that my posting here has morphed into an essay on grief rather than an update on my relocation thoughts. And I suppose that's appropriate. The two are inextricably linked for me...a fact I learned all too late. I could have saved myself a lot of internal questioning and self-loathing had I journaled my way through this odyssey the way I'm starting to now.

And so..."inextricably linked" (pulling out the big guns)...that house (the loss of which I so insultingly compare to true grief) captured a piece of myself that cannot be extricated upon leaving. It's like the door knocker I installed the summer After. I drilled the holes through the two inches of century old wood, all the while wondering how hot the bits would get...especially in July. So after I pulled the bit out, I tested it on my wrist. I still have the scar. Carefully, I tucked my note inscribed with dates and a rare show of literary strength into the hollow body of the knocker and screwed it into the door. That door knocker stays with the house. A piece of me stays with the house. So much life happened to me there and so much change occurred there (to me and to the house...inside and out...for both) that I felt a tearing happen when I locked the door for the last time.

I think that's why it took me so long to settle here. I had to go through grief (for more than a relocation) all over again. And I still am. But at least I'm aware of it now.

It's not just the house, of course, it's leaving dear friends and the little boys who would have been Ari's schoolmates. It's leaving the charisma of Ann Arbor. It's leaving what-you-know. It's leaving Family. All of this is whirled into a rainbow roller coaster of tears, laughter and love. The trick is to know which color, or lack thereof, is causing you pain. Well, I've identified one of them. And perhaps the rainbow will someday lead to that effin' pot of gold (I know Sascha'd like that).