We are moving slowly as time and health allow. Rest and naps take priority and often happen on the spur of the moment. We do not have a timeline for finishing the move. I’m not sure we have a definition of what finishing looks like. Someone said that packing boxes become furniture after a time.

Books go on the shelves a few at a time, having passed a final consideration of ‘keepability’. Pictures fill the empty spaces, giving a new balance to the room. Slowly the house becomes our home, marked by the little bits from occasions we’ve kept and displayed, the bits more valued having survived the clearing and culling. It is a careful display of our time together, so unlike our first shelves of bricks and boards piled high with our college books, rambling monuments with photographs, posters, beach shells and stones and whatever I found valuable enough to stick in my pocket.

That’s all gone now. All the detritus we gathered in pockets and school folders, newsletters, assemblies, and gatherings. What is left are a few potent memory keys, bits of smell and song, and place, too strong to be discarded. They sit on the shelves like old favorite songs we’ve put up to hear again another time. We set out a few at a time.

The heat is going out of the daylight. The setting sun more gold than white, more orange than gold. Grass bends, heavy with dew drops unshed. The air smells of water and rain, a heavy mix of moisture and possibility. No birds sing or flit. From the shrubs, a rabbit tastes the air, listens, and withdraws.

 It is evening. Time for rest.

Blessings

The Road