18 Jan 2012, Posted by Isaac in Advice,Donia,Finances, 3 Comments

Home.

For the 14th time in 10 years of marriage, we are moving. Its a bit different this time. There is no lease or rental agreement. There are no property managers (well, us, I guess). Send your Christmas cards to 404 South 2nd Street | CG | 97424. Probably for a long time.

Pack. Tape. Where is the tape? Marker. Boxes, stacking, move, shuffle, organize and throw out and Goodwill. Tired. Current house becomes a building. Decorations down, memories flooding my mind.

I cried. I thought of three year old Owen 4 residences ago. I’ll never again walk the stairs that he’d clump down, bear in tow, giving credibility to the folklore of Winnie-the Pooh and Christopher Robin. In the sun room he’d play with trains and alphabets, singing the songs of Thomas the Tank Engine and being the best three year old I can imagine. Sweet voice. Kind heart. Content with a mommy at home and fruit snacks.

That house was for 15 months. A good stretch in the world of the Hovets.

I can see it in my mind, but no longer is that place of the present. I can’t turn my head and look where he’d been. Maybe that’s for the better. Maybe I’ll have an easier time than some parents letting Owen be who he is now. I don’t know. Ask me in 5 years.

I am feeling differently with this move. I ache for the places of the past. I see more clearly than ever the value of settling into a place that can bear memories and then remind us, in the moment, what God has brought, allowed, done, taught, groomed, confronted, changed and led us to and through and out of.

I think God is allowing me to feel and think differently. I am ready to be in a place. A lot of land and a structure of old sticks (1910) that will collect our memories.

Tape again. Three overlapping strips for the bottom of a box. Thirteen previous moves teaches you these things. So does working at UPS. Boxes and stressful time lines have been a part of my life for a long time. But, maybe no more.

This time, I am going home.