Growing up, my family moved. A lot. There was one year I attended five different schools. Another year, my mother forgot to enroll me at all and I missed most of my fourth grade year, instead sitting in a relative's house, watching reruns of bad 70's television and playing with my grandmother's antique tea sets. Other times, we'd stay in the same house, the same schools for a few years in a row, long enough to accumulate things in our rooms, to make friends in our classes, to plant new trees in the yard, or build a fence. But in the end, we always moved on again, to accommodate my father's job. I learned to let go of things very early on - I was only allowed to bring a certain number of toys and books each time, so I learned to choose carefully. I was never going to be a hoarder.
Since becoming an adult, I've lived in only four homes, all in the same city. My children have attended only two schools in their lives - a private Pre-K through 8th, and a public high school. They see friends every day who they have literally known their entire lives. They, like all children, do have a little bit of hoarding in them, and our houses have overflowed with their toys and crafts and puzzles and outgrown shoes, and all the debris that follows in the wake of those who are carelessly secure in their own home. They take for granted that things in their lives will change someday, but that someday won't be now. I can't say that I haven't wanted to make moves or changes, but I tried to give them something I never had growing up - a permanent home.
The hardest part of moving all the time wasn't leaving behind books or Barbies or baseballs, it was leaving friends behind. It felt like I always moving on, always leaving just before some monumental event. We unpacked in Mobile on my ninth birthday, having a quick celebration at a pizza parlor recommended by the realtor. I missed a ceremony where I should have gotten a city award for poetry, but we were driving away to Tennessee when that was taking place. All over the country, I left salt dough maps half finished, forts half built, games that would never be completed. Only once in all that time did I watch another friend move away first.
I was eight when Heather moved from a small town in Alabama to Ohio. We had a sleepover two days before, making forts out of blankets between the moving boxes, listening to our voices echo in her nearly empty basement rec room. Her mom made the kind of frozen pizza we liked best, and let us stay up late watching old movies, until the station went off the air around midnight, because television wasn't always twenty-four hours a day. Riding my bike to Heather's street, I pulled up in front of her driveway just in time to see her family climbing into their station wagon, the giant moving truck already rolling away around a corner. Heat rose up off the asphalt as I stopped and Heather got out, ran and gave me one last hug, and promised to write. I stood there, straddling the seat of my bike, feeling the warmth of the pavement through my summer sandals and no warmth anywhere else, and feeling empty inside.
When you're the one moving on, there is often some sorrow, but there's also nervousness and excitement and a sense of adventure ahead of you, no matter how reluctant you are to move at the time. When you are the one being left behind, you feel only the sadness and...hollow. It's bittersweet watching someone who has filled a piece of your life, for no matter how short a time, drive off in to the sunset. As an adult, I'm happy and excited for friends who are embracing a new opportunity, a new adventure, and I feel a little like a selfish asshole because sometimes those feelings get so strongly outweighed by my own sense of loss and wish that they didn't have to move forward.
This summer sees five of my favorite people moving away - all for very good reasons. In some cases, they've known for months that the move was coming, and for others the change was quite sudden. I'm having a hard time saying good-bye, though I know it's certainly not a final word. In today's world of technology, I can easily keep track of them and their lives. But it's not the same - whether they're going a few hours away, or across the country, the change will mean it's not possible to meet up for a last minute drink or plan an evening training session together. And they're moving on in more ways than one. People come into our lives and we can stay in touch, but as things change, our relationships change as well. Moving on has to do with more than just a location on a map. No matter how we might fight it, things will always change.
I am sad to see my friends move, and I am also maybe more than a little bit jealous. I've been rooted for longer that I had realized or planned, as is only right, while I raise my children. My job is wonderful and challenging and means something to me, but it's been the same job for quite a few years. I am the very opposite of moving on right now in my life, and I feel the same restless pull that others do, but I've forced myself to resist it. I've gone forward and grown in other ways, in ways that affect my physical being and my emotional relationships. Stagnant would not describe my life, just grounded. In just a few short years, my children will both be out of school and will be going forward on their own, making their own changes and forging their own paths on the map. And I'll likely feel that pull again to move onward. Maybe that time, I'll decide to let the urge carry me forward.
For this year, I'm planning trips, to California and Colorado, looking forward to testing out a tiny bit of my friends' adventures and new lives. I'm saving up some time for when they come to town to visit, so that we can reinvent our friendships to fit with their new lives and new homes. Things are both ending and beginning in parts of my life right now, and sometimes that seems a little scary. But there's not a whole lot of choice about moving onward, only about which path to follow.
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