will be missed

The fact that we are moving is quickly shifting from an abstract, scary future event into a hard and present tense fact. We have movers coming to quote. We have lease papers to sign. We are selling some of our Giant American furniture that fits our Giant Glasgow flat but will be ridiculous in our tiny Cambridge terraced house.  I have change of address things to fill out for the mail redirection. We have a new nursery for Lewis all signed up. I have started good-byeing, knowing that in 2 short weeks or so, we won't (gulp) LIVE here.

It always helps me (as any of you regular readers know) to list it out. Properly annotate just the very things I am processing. It helps me move through the treacle.

So my beginnings of my endings here. I am sad about leaving Scotland. Full-Stop. It has been a most welcoming country. It likes Americans. It  is not pretentious or snobby or competitive. It has a live and let live feeling. And a sense of culture and collective spirit that is enviable. People are friendly. I have friends.  I have people. It is home. And I hope in some ways it always will be. 

In no apparent order, things I will miss:

• Hearing random bagpipes playing
• Kelvingrove Park- so close, so big, our big garden 2 blocks away
• An Clatchan cafe's easy, perfect park location, caramelised onion sausage sandwiches and open toy policy, a respite for the weary parent with great cake and an outside seat to watch the playpark while you sip
• Biblos chocolate cake, reliable lattes and owner gossip
• The 44 bus
• Grassroots Charlie, always ready with a fun chit chat and a welcome for a local shopper
• Kilts
• Seeing wedding parties walk down the street to the civil ceremonies place
• Lupe Pintos access to all things Tex Mex and oddly necessary American things
• Our large, tall rooms to roam all on one floor
• Having a baby in the familiar if imperfect princess royal hospital
• Dear pal Rhona, real talk and real laughing with kindred spirit, movie nights at GFT
• Acorn Nursery's sincere and relentless staff friendliness
• My sunny yellow kitchen so lovingly upgraded by Mark
• Scotland's space, absence of crowds and heat
• My dear fellow mothering pals to commiserate and kvetch with, learn from, and watch our littles grow big together. I am sad I won't be here for more of the journey together. 
• My supportive and earthy acupuncturist Maureen, seeing me through 2 natural pregnancies
• My first home purchase of lovely historic flat with 16 foot ceilings and more rooms than we knew what to do with
• The place where I became a mother, we became a family and Lewis had his first home
• The toy room, TV room. big bed, tiny bed
• Friendly, open non judgemental Scottish people
• Kick ass curries
• Trips to the elephant museum/transport museum
• Park Circus views
• Glaswegian blether 

And when it makes me too sad, I try to think of the things we are looking forward to in our relocation to Cambridge.

• more chances of actual sunshine
• flat biking 
• a truly international community
• a (more) non smoking & healthy environment
• English country pubs
• being a 1.5 hour drive away from grandparents
• no more climbing 50+ stairs to our flat with a baby, a toddler, a pregnant belly or shopping
• the Cambridge market
• seeing old Cambridge buddies
• another step closer to home
• train ride easy access to London
• coming full circle to where I started my UK adventure and Mark & I stopped just dating and started our lives together
• posh accents
• seeing Mark Love his job again
• my baby girl being born English

 So as I process and we move forward at a speed I feel a bit dizzy from, it rips the band aid off. It would always be hard to leave. I would always be sad. Maybe fast is better. Maybe, like Lewis like to say, we are sailing to the sunshine next.  And that can only be good news.

sharp left turn

Image: cbenjasuwan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

We have been sadly been living a Bon Jovi song ... living on a prayer. Which is a bit tough for an agnostic and a very lapsed Catholic.

Jobs end, money stops, mortgages and bills carry on.
Not real fun.
And now, we are half way there (continuing my Bon Jovi theme.)

A nice juicy contract position and a future to lean into ... ahhh.

And it is in Cambridge.

Not. Glasgow. Not even Scotland.

So here we are on the eve on this all beginning. The kick off.

After a long, cold winter of worrying and waiting for change, tomorrow it starts.

Tomorrow he begins this job.
Tomorrow we begin time apart while we work on moving forward.
Tomorrow things change.

I think the AA serenity prayer is particularly handy right now.

As well as trust. Faith. Hope. Connection. And most of all love.

We know that as long as we are together, happy, healthy and comfortable, our home is together. And that together is just going to be somewhere else.

Selling the flat, packing, moving, explaining it all to a 2.5 year old all while carrying the load of a 3rd trimester at my advanced maternal age with my tiny tolerance for chaos may test my mettle. And my sanity.

So we take this sharp left. We aren't sure what it looks like. Or how it will be. But does anyone? Every time the Universe has asked demanded change and I can go without attachment and with an open heart and a clear vision, it has blown my expectations wide.

So we begin with eyes open, hearts full.

the beginning, the middle and the end

Things are changing in my life. 

Some faster than I can track, some achingly slow and some that are just hovering, waiting to land.

Not all of it feels comfortable to write *out loud* yet.  Even in my own head. 

And it made me think of this beautiful poem, Aristotle, by Billy Collins. 

This is the beginning.

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning.

The first-person narrator introduces hirnself,

tells us about his lineage.

The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.

Here the climbers are studying a map

or pulling on their long woolen socks.

This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.

The profile of an animal is being smeared

on the wall of a cave,

and you have not yet learned to crawl.

This is the opening, the gambit,

a pawn moving forward an inch.

This is your first night with her,

your first night without her.

This is the first part

where the wheels begin to turn,

where the elevator begins its ascent,

before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.

Things have had time to get complicated,

messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.

Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teeming with people at cross-purposes—

a million schemes, a million wild looks.

Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack

here and pitches his ragged tent.

This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,

where the action suddenly reverses

or swerves off in an outrageous direction.

Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph

to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.

Someone hides a letter under a pillow.

Here the aria rises to a pitch,

a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.

And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge

halfway up the mountain.

This is the bridge, the painful modulation.

This is the thick of things.

So much is crowded into the middle—

the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,

Russian uniforms, noisy parties,

lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—

too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,

the car running out of road,

the river losing its name in an ocean,

the long nose of the photographed horse

touching the white electronic line.

This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,

the empty wheelchair,

and pigeons floating down in the evening.

Here the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,

and the climbers are in their graves.

It is me hitting the period

and you closing the book.

It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen

and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.

This is the final bit

thinning away to nothing.

This is the end, according to Aristotle,

what we have all been waiting for,

what everything comes down to,

the destination we cannot help imagining,

a streak of light in the sky,

a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.