I’ve always used a sense of place as my anchor.
We moved into our house in Buffalo when I was three.
When I was about 15 my parents divorced, and my father moved out, leaving me, my mother, and my sister in the house. I stayed in the room I’d grown up in.
When I was about 17, my mother remarried and moved to Rochester, taking my sister with her. I didn’t want to leave—it was my senior year in high school. So my father moved back into the house after she’d left, and once again I stayed in the room I’d grown up in.
When I went to college, my father preserved my room. The bed never moved from the corner it was in, the bookshelves never came down. I could always go home again, and feel that sense of connection to a physical space.
I moved a lot during and after college. But the first thing I did when moving into a new space was to quickly unpack my belongings, and create a personal space, filled with recognizable artifacts of my life.
This time it’s different. This time it feels like I’m in an uneasy holding pattern. Half a family, a fraction of my belongings, no sense of personal space at all. I have too few hangers, so most of my clothes are still in suitcases. I have a kitchen full of bland glasses and dishes, and walls that are mostly bare. I’m even driving a rental car, which heightens the sense of disconnection.
I could buy more hangers, of course. And try to make this apartment feel more like home. But I don’t want to get too comfortable here—in six weeks we’ll be packing again for another move. It doesn’t make sense to unpack boxes now only to repack them next month.
That’s probably why I’m still awake, hours after I first tried to sleep tonight. Even benadryl isn’t working its magic on me this evening.
Gerald and Lane are sleeping in Spearfish, South Dakota tonight. They called me at dinner time, on the verge of panic because the 4th of July crowds had occupied most of the available hotel rooms. (Spearfish is quite close to Mt. Rushmore.) Through the magic of the Internet, I found the the last available room in town, and booked it. That means they’re less than 1200 miles away now—they may even make it here for the 4th! That will help enormously, as will starting a regular work schedule.
I think the benadryl is finally kicking in. Time to give sleep another try.
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