One Week In
As anyone who’s moved knows, the entire process is not for the faint of heart. So going in I knew the first entry in this blog would likely be a wee bit delayed. But it’s been a week now, and the nerves are less frayed, the boxes are fewer (almost gone!) and emotions on the part of all four of us living here seem to be squarely in the positive column.
This move was unlike other moves I’ve undergone, and if I counted them all up, I’ll have moved over a dozen times. Because this was a move not only of location, but of choices and goals. It was not just a lateral move but, literally, a vertical one. It was suburbia to city, house to apartment, owner to renter, driver to walker. It was also a move from gathering and collecting to purging and streamlining. It was a move from 3800 square feet to 1200. From trying to make sure everyone had their own rooms, their own space, to trying to make sure we see one another and spend time with one another as much as we can before all the kids are out of the house.
So many moves within this move. A veritable nesting doll of change.
As Mom, I am manager. Steve is my co-manager, but as he readily admits, there is much that defaults to Mom Manager. And the biggest one is the management and care of the emotional temperature of the family. So as any conscientious manager does, I tried to prepare for this part of my responsibilities. I did the principal Mom Manager activity of pre-emptive visualization: the this-might-happen and they-might-feel-this scenario-imaginings. I was ready for my youngest to experience loss, sadness, anxiety and fear. I was prepared for my teen to experience regret, disappointment, loss of sense of personal space and grumpiness. I was prepared for Steve to experience exhaustion and tension. But what I forgot to do was visualize what I might experience. And so it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise that it was my own emotions which surprised me the most. Because none of my lovely people experienced what I had mentally prepared myself for them to experience. It was just me, and I’m pretty sure I experienced all of those emotions for them: loss, sadness, regret, anxiety, fear, disappointment, exhaustion, tension, loss of a sense of personal space and grumpiness.
And as you can imagine, experiencing all of those while undergoing the process of the move itself makes for one heck of a first week. Especially when, as Mom, I’m always checking my own emotional temperature, but for me I’m “checking” it as in holding it in. Feeling it but trying not to let it show. Yes, it’s super healthy. But it’s also human, and understandable for someone in my role. The only problem is that it takes such a massive amount of interior work to feel through those emotions and come out the other side. I was somewhat successful. But not so successful that I didn’t put a photo of our house as my laptop screen saver. And not so successful that my high EQ daughter didn’t ask within moments of waking up a few days ago, “Mom, you seem….are you okay?”
So I finally admitted what I kept telling my kids it was totally fine to admit: that yes, I liked the apartment and I knew it was going to be great, but I also missed our house and the nature that surrounded it, and worried about how we would all adjust. And, like the magic that it is, as soon as I said it out loud, the pressure lessened, the load lightened, the truth bore up and spread itself out like the weightless feather blanket that it is.
Sometimes Mom Managers need to take their own advice a little sooner. But, as I also say, better late than never.
So it’s been about two days where I’ve finally felt the beginnings of that nonchalant, warm yellow feeling of comfort. “Steve,” I told him last night, “it’s starting to feel like home.” “It’s nice, isn’t it?” he replied. And I knew he didn’t mean the apartment: he meant the feeling — that feeling of being at home. At home in our new, high-rise, downtown, rented apartment. At home in our new home.
